U.S. Heading For Financial Trouble

[barb162]

U.S. Heading For Financial Trouble

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But David Walker is no wild-eyed zealot. As Steve Kroft reports, David Walker is an accountant, the nation’s top accountant to be exact, the comptroller general of the United States. He has totaled up our government's income, liabilities, and future obligations and concluded the numbers simply don’t add up. And he’s not alone. Its been called the "dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows" – a set of financial truths so inconvenient that most elected officials don’t even want to talk about them, which is exactly why David Walker does.


"I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan but our own fiscal irresponsibility," Walker tells Kroft.

David Walker is a prudent man and a highly respected public official. As comptroller general of the United States he runs he Government Accountability Office, the GAO, which audits the government's books and serves as the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. He has more than 3,000 employees, a budget of a half a billion dollars, and a message he considers urgent.

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You’re probably expecting to hear from someone who disagrees with the comptroller general’s numbers, projections, and analysis. But hardly anyone does. He is accompanied on the wake-up tour by economists from the conservative Heritage Foundation, the left-leaning Brookings Institution, and the non-partisan Concord Coalition. The only dissenters seem to be a small minority of economists who believe either that the U.S. can grow its way out of the problem, or that Walker is over-stating it.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/60minutes/main2528226.shtml

[Erika]

1. W has busted this country

but his corporatist globalists have never been richer. He does have his priorities. It ain't Americans.

[barb162]

2. Bush has clearly been spending like a drunken sailor

especially for enrichment of his rich buddies. But I would say this crap has been going on for decades and nobody wants to talk about it. Taxes should have been increased all along and it isn't happening. Just like the story of the drug bill. It is costing billions right now and taxes weren't increased. Same with the Iraq war. ETC. It's insane.

[Toucano]

3. Wasn't that Osama's plan all along?

Didn't anyone tell the neocons about the Soviet Union's foray into Afghanistan?