US News

BAM: WE’RE BROKE

President Obama has checked the accounting ledgers and come to a disturbing conclusion: The government is broke.

“We are out of money,” Obama said during a lengthy interview with C-SPAN that aired yesterday morning.

He was responding to a question about the country’s $11 trillion national debt, which is the money the government borrows long-term, and the potential $1.7 trillion budget deficit, which is the gap between tax revenue and current spending.

“We’ve got a short-term problem . . . We had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system. We had to deal with the auto companies and a huge recession which drains tax revenue,” the president said.

But America’s immediate cash crunch won’t derail efforts to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, Obama insisted.

“I am absolutely committed to keeping this process moving . . . focusing on how we reduce costs, how do we make sure families have some confidence that they can get health care when they need it and they won’t go bankrupt because their child gets sick,” he said.

Refusing to tackle the exploding costs of Medicaid and Medicare now means an even bigger financial catastrophe in the future, Obama warned.

An overhaul now will reduce costs and free up more money over the long term, making it easier to pay down the national debt and deal with other pressing financial issues, the president said.

Obama also said that he’s spoken to former president George W. Bush since taking office, but refused to outline what the two had discussed, saying that he’s sticking to the “policy of keeping confidence with predecessors.”

He was more forthcoming on the topic of a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Obama told C-SPAN he’s seeking an intellectual heavyweight with a “common touch,” someone whose brand of justice means seeing life from the perspective of the powerless.

Meanwhile, in his weekly Internet address yesterday, Obama urged Americans to honor the sacrifice of veterans.

“We have a responsibility to serve them as well as they serve all of us,” Obama said. The president plans to attend a Memorial Day ceremony tomorrow at Arlington National Cemetery.

gotis@nypost.com