The case of the 12 zeros
But wait, it gets worse. The real cost of the president's program soars after he leaves office, especially the new prescription-drug program, which has already jumped from $400 billion to an estimated $724 billion in the first decade, as costs increase from $37 billion a year to $110 billion a year. This is just one of many programs whose escalating costs will leave Bush's successors in a vicious budget crunch. Making matters still worse is the fact that reforms of major entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security are essentially not being addressed. If that remains the case, fiscal catastrophe will be virtually unavoidable.
What's to be done?
We must insist on truth and transparency, and our leaders must tell us clearly the current-value dollar cost of all major spending and tax bills before they are voted upon. We must also bring back basic budgetary controls, such as pay-go rules, that require new spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for by corresponding tax increases or spending cuts. We will need to revise our tax code and then improve our efforts to enforce it so as to collect hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue lost to special tax preferences, in uncollected back taxes, and through tax evasion and abusive tax shelters. Finally, we must bring our health costs under control before they break the nation's fiscal bank. The sooner we act the better. Otherwise, compound interest on the growing debt will eat us up.
The American public gets it. In a recent poll, 90 percent called the deficit a very serious or somewhat serious problem. Which raises a rather interesting question: Where are all those budget hawks when we really need them?
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