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Jim Millstein 15112Burning the Furniture to Heat theHouse – The Potential Role of AssetSales in Funding the FederalGovernment’s DeficitsJim Millstein*“And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspreadand to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given usfor the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated selfgovernmententrusted to us.” – John L. O’Sullivan 1IntroductionWashington’s inability to bring its deficits under control is the productof a political stalemate, now entering its second decade, thatthreatens the long-term solvency of the Federal Government. Onepolitical party is committed to “starving the beast,” the other to keepingin place post-retirement benefits designed when Americans lived* Jim Millstein served as Chief Restructuring Officer of the US Department of theTreasury from 2009 to 2011 and is now the Chairman and CEO of Millstein &Co., L.P., a financial services firm.1 New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845, quoted in McCrisken, Trevor B., Exceptionalism:Manifest Destiny, in Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, Vol. 2, p.68, 2002.