"perrie" <perryneheum@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:712f25d1-b9a7-4dea-b598-b98da432975f@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "The United States has no more than five or 10 years to readjust its
> policies to stave off fiscal ruin."
>
> -- David M. Walker, Fomer Chief, U.S. Government
> Accountability Office
>
> "Almost half the government debt owed to banks or individuals is held
> by foreign creditors, notably China, Japan and the OPEC nations, up
> from 13 percent five years ago."
>
> -- The Wa****ngton Post
>
>
Haven't you heard the news?
Now Repugs think debt does not matter...
>
> Your Nincompoop-In-Chief has had more than seven years to heed
> warnings from wiser heads than those that exist in the
> "administration" to reduce the nation's harmful, deleterious budget
> debt. But to no avail.
>
> Now, wiser heads are saying the future looks dire, unless ...
>
> ---------------------------------------
> "New Task for a Budget Straight-Talker"
>
> By David S. Broder
> Op-Ed
> Sunday, March 16, 2008; B07
>
>
> It was sheer coincidence that Wednesday, David M. Walker's last day as
> comptroller general of the United States, was the same day that the
> House and Senate began to debate their budget resolutions for next
> year.
>
> As the head of the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm
> of Congress, Walker has been perhaps the most outspoken official in
> Wa****ngton warning of the fiscal train wreck that awaits this country
> unless it mends its ways.
>
> The budget resolutions approved last week both envisage an increase in
> the deficit next year. The Senate predicts $366 billion, the House
> $340 billion. Meanwhile, over the next five years, independent
> estimates are that the national debt, already $9 trillion, will grow
> by $2 trillion. Almost half the government debt owed to banks or
> individuals is held by foreign creditors, notably China, Japan and the
> OPEC nations, up from 13 percent five years ago.
>
> Both resolutions forecast a balanced budget in 2012, but they use the
> same dubiously optimistic assumptions President Bush employed to make
> the same claim for his tax-and-spending proposal. Once again, the hard
> choices are being pushed off to some hazy future.
>
> For much of his nine years as comptroller general, and with increasing
> urgency in recent times, Walker has been warning policymakers in
> Wa****ngton and audiences around the country that this nation is
> courting disaster by not paying its bills.
>
>
>
>
> Last week, he cautioned in a speech that "largely due to the aging of
> the baby boomers and rising health care costs, the United States faces
> decades of red ink. . . . If the United States continues as it has,
> policymakers will eventually have to raise taxes or slash government
> services that U.S. citizens depend on and take for granted. . . . Over
> time, the U.S. government could be reduced to doing little more than
> mailing out Social Security checks to retirees and paying interest on
> the massive national debt."
>
> Even as a nonpartisan employee of Congress, Walker has been blunt
> enough to say, again and again, that "at both ends of Pennsylvania
> Avenue and on both sides of the political aisle, there are too few
> leaders who face the facts" about this fiscal mess.
>
> When I went to see Walker two days before he left office, he told me
> he had begun to realize he was pu****ng the limits on advocacy at the
> GAO. So he jumped at the op****tunity offered him by Peter G. Peterson,
> the son of Greek immigrants who made a fortune as a Wall Street
> investment banker. Peterson has created a foundation bearing his name
> and promised to fund it with $1 billion over a period of years. Walker
> is now running it.
>
> The foundation's main focus will be to spur action to curb the
> deficits, but other target areas will include education, especially
> fiscal literacy and civics; energy conservation; and nonproliferation
> of nuclear and biological weapons.
>
> With Peterson's backing, Walker said he will be able to do things his
> old job did not allow -- "advocate specific solutions, build
> coalitions and put grass-roots pressure on Wa****ngton."
>
> Because others already have done "a lot of the basic research and
> analysis" needed in these areas, Walker said that the Peterson
> Foundation will emphasize the advocacy role, especially with the
> business community and young people.
>
> He said that his experience in 35 town meetings has convinced him that
> "the people are ahead of the politicians" in their readiness to see
> the government discipline itself. "But they don't know what we need to
> do."
>
> Walker said that in his judgment, the United States "has no more than
> five or 10 years" to readjust its policies to stave off fiscal ruin.
> He said that "unless the next president makes this a priority, this
> effort of ours won't make a difference." But he said that the public
> will have to demand a change of course, or politicians will continue
> to ****lly-shally.
>
> The last time the broad public grasped the danger of budget deficits
> was in 1992, when Ross P***** paid for half-hour television
> infomercials, complete with dramatic charts and graphs, as part of his
> presidential campaign. That seeded the ground for Bill Clinton's 1993
> effort that succeeded briefly in wiping out those deficits.
>
> P***** later gave Walker an autographed copy of one of those charts, as
> a tribute to a legatee. Walker says the foundation will try to emulate
> P*****, using television, the Internet and all other communication
> tools. No task is more im****tant to our future.
>
> davidbroder@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403336.html
>
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