Heavy Over All Our Heads
With the Bush administration, one never knows what is intentional and what isn't, but the president's proposal to introduce private investment accounts into Social Security has certainly served to divert attention from whether the whole federal government is headed for a fiscal train wreck.</br></br>That's probably a good idea, from the administration's point of view, because both it and many private employers are asking people to pin their retirement and other hopes for the future on financial assets. And they are asking this at a time when the government is promising benefits and services it can't come close to affording without taxing the fillings out of our teeth or going to banana republic-style inflation -- or both.</br></br>It is a reality that David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, has been trying to point out to everyone who will listen and to those who won't.</br></br>Walker is head of the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency that studies government programs and policies and reports on how well or badly they are working.</br></br>The costs of the three big social programs of our society -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- are rising so fast that by 2040 they and interest payments on federal borrowings will consume all the government's revenue, even assuming that the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire and that discretionary government spending (spending that is not already promised by law) grows only at the rate of inflation.