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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary H who wrote (18338)	5/22/2003 5:33:10 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82289

Gary, I think this one is up your street. boston.com >>>OUR GOVERNMENT is going broke. The feds face bills that are far beyond our capacity to pay -- by $44 trillion to be precise. The longer we ignore them, the bigger they get. Yet President Bush is working overtime to deepen our fiscal trap. This $44 trillion figure is not ours. Nor is it some other academics' calculation. It was produced last fall by economists and budget analysts at the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Budget Office. The study was ordered by then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil and was slated to appear in the president's budget, released in February. Why are the nation's fiscal affairs in such a mess? The reason is straightforward. Baby boomers are just five years from starting to collect Social Security retirement benefits and eight years from starting to collect Medicare benefits. When all 76 million boomers are retired, we'll have twice the number of elderly beneficiaries, but only 15 percent more workers to pay their benefits. Our current team leader, President Bush, is doing his part. Taken together, his first tax cut and his proposed second tax cut, which is about to be passed by Congress, account for roughly a sixth of the fiscal gap. The president, an ardent believer in voodoo economics, is convinced his tax cuts will stimulate growth and dramatically raise revenues. Neither economic theory nor economic facts supports this view. In fact, the president is not only burying us in explicit and implicit debt, he's undermining the economy's future performance. The stakes are now too high for more political games and flaky economic theories. Democrats and Republicans alike need to send our leaders a firm message: Deal responsibly with the coming generational obligations! * If we don't, we can look forward to massive cuts in future Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax hikes, high inflation, and bitter political strife.<<< * Can you see that happening? What a joke.