Does $2 trillion pay for our unfunded liabilities much less annual expenses? NOT!

by John Sykes

Folks, we are out of money. We keep dithering around about a billion here and a trillion there but this has about become meaningless.

National Review On Line tells us:

"Of course, the federal government is already in a deep hole due to the projected rapid cost increases in Social Security and Medicare. The trustees for those programs reported earlier this year (see here and here) that Social Security’s seventy-five year unfunded liability stands at $5 trillion, while Medicare’s has reached at an astounding $36 trillion.

It is possible to do a similar “unfunded liability” calculation for the new entitlement spending in the House bill. Assuming a discount rate of 5.7 percent per year, the bill would add more than $10 trillion over seventy-five years in new unfunded government obligations."

The way I do the math, that adds up to $51 trillion!

As I understand it, we only collect about $2 trillion in total US tax revenues per year and there are comparatively no reserve funds left in the entitlement programs. Worse yet, this is only going to get worse because this country is aging.

Our Congress and leadership, a term I use very loosely, are fiddling as this smolders. I may just be a right-wingnut radical but I can't figure out how $2 trillion a year is going to pay for our entitlement programs. Add in the rest of the pork, "non-stimulus", and take-over expenses. Then figure in our other annual expenses being generated by gutless politicians who don't even read the bills throwing away our hard-earned money.

That's right. A $1 trillion here or there won't make any difference. We are already broke!!

In the end, if we don't throw out our illiterate politicians really, really soon, we will have to repudiate our national debt or inflate ourselves into oblivion.