Fiscally Impossible?

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$222 Trillion Unfunded Liabilities

The expert here is Prof. Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University. His most recent report says that total unfunded liabilities went from $211 trillion a year ago to $222 trillion this year.
 
The biggest source of future red ink will be Medicare. In second place is Social Security.

How can the government pay off these obligations? It can't. The possibility does not exist. The government needs a spare $222 trillion to invest in private companies. This investment must make a return of at least 5% to provide the money needed to pay meet the government's obligations. There is no $222 trillion available, and no capital markets large enough to absorb $222 trillion.

Conclusion: the U.S. government will default. 

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Funding Government Spending

The Biggest Threat to National Security

Jacob Hornberger writes:

Everyone is finally starting to recognize that the federal government is merrily traveling down the road to national bankruptcy ... and is going to take a lot of Americans down with it. The government is spending at least $1 trillion dollars more than what it is taking in ... every year, with no end in sight...

What are the biggest programs that all that federal spending and debt are funding?

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other so-called welfare-state entitlements, along with military spending, including the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet, what do Republicans and Democrats say? They say, "We promise you that we won't touch any of those programs. But we also promise you that we'll rein in out-of-control federal spending and debt."

That's ridiculous. Why? Because all those welfare-warfare programs amount to 80 percent of federal expenditures! How can they rein in federal spending without touching programs that constitute 80 percent of federal spending, especially when the balance of the spending includes interest on the debt and such sacrosanct programs as the war on drugs?

They can't. It's a joke when they claim they can...

What do we need a standing army for? What do we need a military-industrial complex for? What do they do for us?

Nothing good. They suck vast amounts of productive capital out of the pockets of the American people, they mire America in foreign invasions, occupations, assassinations, torture, rendition, indefinite incarceration, and suspension of habeas corpus and civil liberties, create new enemies every day, and send us further down the road to national bankruptcy with ever-increasing expenditures.

As President Dwight Eisenhower warned us many years ago, the military-industrial complex poses a grave threat to our freedom and well-being. Time has proven him correct...

It's time for the American people to confront the obvious: the welfare-warfare state way of life has proven to be a bad mistake. It should never have been adopted. We should never have abandoned the principles of liberty, free markets, and a constitutionally limited republic on which our nation was founded.

It's still not too late. We need to repeal, not reform, all socialist, interventionist, and imperialist welfare-warfare state programs, departments, and agencies. It's the only way to avoid national bankruptcy, hyperinflation, and soaring taxes and debt. It's the only way to restore freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony to our land.

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Jim Bunning , Welfare, and Atlas

Everyone knows that federal spending is out of control. The feds are spending $1.4 trillion more than what they’re collecting in taxes. And that’s just for this year...

So, Bunning blocks a welfare bill on the ground that the federal government shouldn’t be borrowing any more money. If it can’t afford to be providing the welfare, Bunning said, then it shouldn’t be spending more money.

The statist crowd went ballistic. The attacks were the standard ones whenever anyone objects to any welfare-state scheme: “He’s selfish, self-centered, and greedy. He hates the poor and loves the rich. He’s just grandstanding. The bill is only a small percentage of total spending and so it doesn’t make any difference in the larger scheme of things.”

But the statist reaction to Bunning’s move goes much deeper than that and is a perfect reflection of what the socialistic welfare state has done to the American people. Having been born and raised under the welfare state, American recipients of welfare largess, including those on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, education grants, mortgage guarantees, and bailout and stimulus monies, honestly believe that they are entitled to continue receiving it for as long as they “need” the money...

This is what the welfare state has done to America. It has produced a real war among the American people — between those who produce and own their wealth and those who are trying to get their hands on other people’s money through the force of the state. The 19th-century French legislator Frederic Bastiat put it well when he indicated that under the welfare state, the government becomes a great fiction by which some people try to live at the expense of other people.

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