Our Drunken Uncle

Posted 10/21/2009 07:23 PM ET

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Spending: According to two separate Government Accountability Office scenarios, America's long-term fiscal outlook is "unsustainable." No surprise, since Uncle Sam is spending like a drunken sailor.

The GAO, Congress' in-house think tank, warns that in "little over 10 years, debt held by the public as a percent of GDP" will hit a record high, exceeding the debt-to-GDP ratio seen after World War II. Then it will "grow at a steady rate thereafter," according to the government forecasters.

"Social Security cash surpluses, which have been used to help finance other government activities, are projected to turn to cash deficits by 2016," the GAO warns.

The agency's fall update of its "Long-Term Fiscal Outlook" adds that "the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2037, 4 years earlier than estimated last year." The Medicare trust fund's day of reckoning, meanwhile, "was also moved forward by 2 years to 2017."

The GAO used two simulations, an optimistic one making the assumption of historically lower-than-average nonentitlement spending and higher-than-average tax revenues, and a second model assuming that spending and revenues would keep to historical averages. But "both simulations show that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path."

The non-optimistic simulation "shows persistent annual budget deficits in excess of 7% of GDP — levels not seen since the aftermath of World War II." Under that scenario, "roughly 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue will be spent on the major entitlement programs and net interest costs by 2019."

Even if revenue remains constant at 20.2% of GDP — higher than the historical average — by 2030 there will be little room for "all other spending," which includes "national defense, homeland security, investment in highways and mass transit and alternative energy sources, plus smaller entitlement programs such as Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and farm price supports."

It sounds like doomsday. But the politicians who run Washington are ignoring the dire warnings.

This week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is convening a gaggle of ideologically friendly economists with the aim of getting cover for yet another stimulus — even though the last one of $787 billion made no discernible dent in unemployment, which threatens to reach double digits.

And Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., appearing on Fox News Wednesday, spoke for lots of his fellow liberals in blithely proposing a brand-new, massive entitlement in the form of a government-run health scheme, claiming that "a public option helps bring down the costs."

Also appearing on Fox Wednesday, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., after accusing Democrats on the Senate floor of a "Bernie Madoff approach to (health care) funding," warned that when disguised funding is tallied up, the true cost of Congress' proposed government health takeover — even without the public option — is $1.8 trillion.

Government spending is burning our children's futures to the ground, yet our "leaders" in Washington think it's time to spray the kerosene of still more spending on the fire.