If you live anywhere but Washington, D.C., you probably believe that the federal government spends too much. Today the national debt is more than $17 trillion. CBO figured that existing budget plans would add between $6.3 trillion and $8.8 trillion in red ink over the coming decade.
Social Security and Medicare alone account for more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, promised benefits for which no revenues are set. Counting a multitude of other debts and obligations, American taxpayers are on the hook for more than $220 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
As I point out in my new Forbes online column:
However, denizens of Washington see things very differently. Policymakers recently approved a bipartisan budget that increased discretionary spending, theoretically the easiest outlay to control, over the next two years. Legislators ignored so-called entitlement outlays, which threaten to consume the entire federal budget.
It really doesn’t matter which party is in charge in Washington. Most Republicans have little desire to cut federal outlays. One man’s waste is another man’s vote-winning special interest hand-out.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R‑Ok.) has issued a second “Wastebook” which contains 100 of the dumbest uses of taxpayers’ money. Explained the Senator: “While the president and his cabinet issued dire warnings about the cataclysmic impacts of sequestration, taxpayers were not alerted to all of the waste being spared from the budget axe.”