I want you to put this "All it takes is a lot of money. "
together with the article below, and then we'll talk about how we're going to afford "a lot of money" for Iraq, as well as a lot of money for the domestic side, which I remember you are interested in supporting.:
Worries grow about state of fiscal denial
Eric Black, Star Tribune
Last update: October 16, 2005 at 9:14 PM
The national debt, which currently equals 37 percent of the gross domestic product, could rise to 600 percent over the next 40 years, according to projections by the Government Accountability Office, the federal government's internal watchdog.
Even in a more optimistic GAO projection, the debt would still rise to unimaginable levels and impose crushing burdens on future taxpayers, including today's teenagers and young adults.
"Economists of the left, right and center agree that we're racing down the track toward a fiscal train wreck," said Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the Heritage Foundation. "The only ones in denial are the Congress."
"As stewards of our children's economic future, we're totally flunking," said Bob Bixby of the Concord Coalition.
"At a gut level, I think Americans understand that piling debt on our children is morally reprehensible."
Bixby, Riedl, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution will try to deliver a wake-up call on the looming fiscal crisis this morning at a University of Minnesota conference titled "Leadership and the Fiscal Future of the United States."
What it's not about
It's not about the Bush-era tax cuts, the Iraq war, the pork-barrel spending in the recent transportation bill or paying for Hurricane Katrina, Bixby said. Although all those things made the short-term fiscal picture worse, they are mere blips compared with the big trends that caused the problem.
The improvement from the 2004 record $412 billion deficit to the $319 billion of fiscal 2005 is not evidence that Washington is beginning to address the problem, the panelists agreed.
And we can't keep cutting taxes to grow our way out of the hole, said Riedl, the most conservative and anti-tax member of the panel. No realistic level of future economic growth will do the trick.
Nor is the solution a matter of going back to the taxing and spending of the late Clinton administration, the panelists agreed. Even though those policies produced a brief respite from annual deficits, they didn't deal with the long-term heart of the problem.
What it is about
It's mostly about the projected growth in the three huge entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- as the baby boomers approach retirement. Those programs already account for 40 percent of federal spending. And as health care costs continue to rise faster than inflation, the cost of health programs will surpass that of Social Security.
Frustration with the lack of action is another thing that unites deficit hawks from across the spectrum. "That's one thing that's motivating several of us, who don't agree on many things, to get on a plane and come to Minneapolis to see if we can get some public attention on an issue that Washington doesn't want to talk about, or talks about in ways that are dishonest and myopic," said Sawhill.
"Lawmakers focus on the election calendar," Riedl said. "Economic crises that can occur 10, 20 or 30 years down the road aren't on their radar."
But if the unsustainable fiscal trend isn't addressed, Sawhill said, there are only two ways the story can end: a sudden wrenching crisis or a slow, steady decline in the economic strength of our country.
The panelists agree that only three categories of action -- all unpleasant -- will address the issue: cutting entitlement spending, which means lower health and retirement benefits for future recipients; higher federal taxes in any or all categories, or deep cuts in nonentitlement spending.
Most of the analysts agreed that the problem is so big it will require elements of all three.
How bad could it be?
Riedl said Heritage will soon release projections even scarier than those developed by the GAO. For example, he said, if you tried to keep up with future spending by raising income taxes, you would have to double every marginal tax rate.
On the other hand, if taxes and spending are left on autopilot and the government just keeps borrowing whatever it needs to pay its bills, the GAO simulation shows that by 2044 our kids will be spending more just to pay interest on the debt than we are paying this year for all government spending.
"It's like a family that keeps spending more than they make and putting it on their credit card," Bixby said. "Eventually, you get to where just paying the minimum amount to keep the card going is what breaks you."
Walker, a political independent who has headed the congressional watchdog agency since 1998, said that when he needs to put a face on the problem, he thinks about his granddaughters, ages 4 and 2.
"This country has a long tradition of each generation trying to leave things better off and better positioned for the next," he said. "I'm concerned that the baby boomers are at risk of not living up to that tradition, because of choices not made and decisions not taken.
"The good news is, we've got time to mend our ways if we get serious soon," he continued. "The first thing we have to do is convince people we're on an imprudent and unsustainable path."
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