David Walker is not a name that most Americans will know if you live outside the Beltway and most people inside the Beltway wouldn’t know it either. Walker, who can walk the streets in anonymity, is the head of the Government Accountability Office, in short, the country’s chief Accountant. In a briefing last week, according to David Broder, writing in the Washington Post yesterday, Walker noted that the debt load being carried by America is such that the budget deficit amounts to $156,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. For a family of four, that is equivalent to a mortgage on a $630,000 home, but having no home to show for it.
The Treasury Department reported to Congress (but never issued a press release) that the accumulated debt of the United states is $760 billion, or more than twice the officially announced budget deficit of $319 billion. This $760 billion is difference between its income and it liabilities, but purchases made this year. It is equivalent to having your personal mortgage and other debts totaling $319,000 and then buying on credit an additional $421,000 in goods and services. At some point, creditors would stop giving you credit because your ability to pay your debts has greatly outstripped your income. But the federal government doesn’t have a creditor to put the kibosh on extra spending.
The GOP is largely responsible for this financial fiasco and we need to get back to, or rather actually adopt, a budget process that most Americans live by. Don’t borrow more than you can repay and limit your spending better. But cutting the pork of the budget will only go so far. We need to restructure the entire budget process.
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