Think that's overstated? Well here's CBO Director Elmendorf:
Returning our finances to a state approximating fiscal sanity will be the dominant domestic policy debate for the foreseeable future. This may at times be crowded out by remarkable circumstances at home and abroad, but it will persist. If not dealt with, it will eventually swamp all other concerns.
Those services that people have come to expect are a bipartisan affair; from the expansive Obama agenda (healthcare reform, cap & trade, permanent expansion of government spending under the guise of stimulus) to the bizarre fiscal bulimia of massive spending coupled with tax cuts that was the W. Bush administration.
The question for me now is there any group of leaders within either party with the fortitude and sufficiently long view to tackle this seemingly intractable problem or is it the case that no permanent solution will be enacted until conditions become so intolerable that it is apparent to any and every citizen that we can't go on this way. I hope for the former and fear the latter.
I concluded the talk by emphasizing that fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path to an extent that cannot be solved by minor tinkering. The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.This is our problem in a (incredibly tough and bitter) nutshell.
Returning our finances to a state approximating fiscal sanity will be the dominant domestic policy debate for the foreseeable future. This may at times be crowded out by remarkable circumstances at home and abroad, but it will persist. If not dealt with, it will eventually swamp all other concerns.
Those services that people have come to expect are a bipartisan affair; from the expansive Obama agenda (healthcare reform, cap & trade, permanent expansion of government spending under the guise of stimulus) to the bizarre fiscal bulimia of massive spending coupled with tax cuts that was the W. Bush administration.
The question for me now is there any group of leaders within either party with the fortitude and sufficiently long view to tackle this seemingly intractable problem or is it the case that no permanent solution will be enacted until conditions become so intolerable that it is apparent to any and every citizen that we can't go on this way. I hope for the former and fear the latter.
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