The U.S. Comptroller General, David Walker,...W's own man...disagrees with your complacency. He is in fact, in a state of sheer panic. He predicts we face a "Demographic Tsunami"...which our hapless spending has only made worse.
WASHINGTON — The comptroller general of the United States is explaining how the nation's finances are going to hell."We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede," David Walker tells a group of reporters. He runs through a long list of fiscal challenges, led by the imminent retirement of the baby boomers, whose promised Medicare and Social Security benefits will swamp the federal budget in coming decades.
The conversation remains somber for most of an hour. Then one reporter smiles and asks, "Aren't you depressed in the morning?"
Sadly, it's no laughing matter. To hear Walker, the nation's top auditor, tell it, the United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its financial condition is "worse than advertised," he says. It has a "broken business model." It faces deficits in its budget, its balance of payments, its savings — and its leadership.
Walker's not the only one saying it. As Congress and the White House struggle to trim up to $50 billion from the federal budget over five years — just 3% of the $1.6 trillion in deficits projected for that period — budget experts say the nation soon could face its worst fiscal crisis since at least 1983, when Social Security bordered on bankruptcy.
Mr. Walker appears to be speaking of federal spending in the sense of guaranteed entitlements - The point here being people trying to suggest GWB is spending more the ever when in reality he is simply spending less in terms of federal spending as a % of the economy - And he has cut non-security related discretionary spending for 5 straight years!
That doesn't mean that federal spending isn't too high (not to mention State and local spending)....but the reality is GWB is trying to address the largest federal spending entitlement program via Soc Sec reform (of course it would have helped greatly if R. Reagan hadn't foolishly raised FICA taxes on all Americans and thus only began the larger wealth stealing burden on to another generation....we expect this of DEMs...but Reagan should have never raised FICA taxes).
GWB is simply having to deal with this automatic increases in federal spending that are to a large degree completely out of his control.