Free Republic

The $45 Trillion Problem Carefree spending, huge tax cuts, and—above all—unalterable demographic facts have put us all in a box. And there's no easy way out by Nathan Littlefield ..... ven if you think government budget numbers are generally not very interesting (and they do tend to blur together into an eye-glazing morass), here's a number to quicken the pulse: $45.5 trillion. That's the size of the long-term gap between the federal government's projected outlays (future spending plus current debt) and its projected revenues. Most government budget projections look only a brief distance into the future—a year, perhaps, or ten...

Last fall Paul O'Neill, then Secretary of the Treasury, wanted a simple answer to a thorny question: How prepared was the nation today to pay all its future bills? Two government experts worked for months to calculate the answer. Their findings, which shocked even them, were never published—the Bush administration made sure of that. The reason for the silence was that by the time the two researchers had completed their study, O'Neill had been thrown out of the Treasury and replaced by the more politically astute John Snow. No savvy administration power player would dare point out, right in the...

June 1, 2003, 7:13PM Lessons in how to make $43 trillion disappear By SCOTT BURNS Universal Press Syndicate ON Friday, May 16, the word was out. A $350 billion tax cut was a done deal. So why did the stock market sink that day? Why did it plunge the following Monday, losing 2.5 percent of its value? One possible explanation is Treasury Secretary John Snow and his comments on the dollar. Another is concern about new terrorist attacks. But let me suggest a third possibility. Despite efforts to suppress it, word is getting around we can't afford a tax cut....

<p>NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Many economists worry that the U.S. federal budget deficit could approach a record $500 billion this year.</p> <p>Few, however, have grasped that the fiscal problems facing the United States could make an itty bitty $500 billion deficit look like pocket change.</p>