Forty or so years ago Senator Everett Dirksen said, “A billion here. A billion there. And pretty soon it adds up to real money.” Today, we’re talking trillions and, if we continue ignoring reality and refusing to deal with our problems, tomorrow we’ll be talking quadrillions.
The latest GAO estimate as to what we would have to put away today to pay the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit alone is $8.119 trillion. The Comptroller General, David Walker, called this “one of the largest unfunded liabilities undertaken by the federal government”. It’s good that Bush is focusing on Social Security, but the costs of Medicare are now twice as large as those of Social Security. Both programs have to be fixed.
The annual financial statements of the federal government show your individual gross government debt at $25,000, whether you are one month or 100 years old. When you add in all our unfunded liabilities and commitments, such as SSA and Medicare, your individual debt climbs to $145,000. That is, every kid born today in this country starts out being $145,000 in the hole.
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