A time of truly hard choices and real sacrifice is always something that's looming but never gets here. But what happens when the time really does come? When the debt is piled too high, when the economy threatens to sink under the weight of accumulated obligations that have been put off too long? There are more than a few signs that those times are not so far away for the federal government, and that in some big (and big-spending) states, the day of reckoning is now.