"What kind of America are we going to leave to our kids?" The question is the biggest cliche in American politics -- and the least seriously addressed major issue.
Because, in fact, the now-retiring baby boom generation is passing on to its children an America buried in debt, woefully short on savings and investment and facing stupendous tasks we don't have any idea how to finance.
The United States already ranks far behind its major economic competitors in health care outcomes, educational performance, environmental quality and national savings -- threatening the country's world leadership and standard of living.
The person who sounds the alarm about all this better than anyone else -- and deserves to be vice president on either party's ticket -- is David Walker, recently resigned as the head of the Government Accountability Office and now CEO of the Peter Peterson Foundation.
A former Reagan administration official, Walker ran -- and transformed -- the GAO on an independent, bipartisan basis. He couldn't deliver any state or constituency, but he'd mark either party's presidential nominee as a determined, visionary reformer.
From a fusty agency specializing in microanalysis and known as the General Accounting Office, Walker gave GAO a new name and turned it into a broad-gauge
investigator of waste and a tireless activist in the cause of economic sanity.
Along with representatives from the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institution and the Concord Coalition, Walker traveled the country on a "fiscal wake-up tour" to make people aware of the unsustainability of America's long-term finances.
The killer statistic that tour participants emphasized was that, by 2040, three federal programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, plus interest on the national debt -- are scheduled to consume 20 percent of gross domestic product, or what the federal government now spends for all its functions.
That's practically a dictionary definition of "unsustainable." It means that the next generation of workers will have to have its taxes more than doubled.
In reams of reports and pungent speeches, Walker has struck a loud series of gongs about all levels of debt and unfunded obligations, the challenges of an aging population and the consequences of inaction. He also outlined proposed solutions -- all politically difficult.
Walker's principal mantra is "no more entitlement programs that are not paid for." Last week he denounced congressional plans to spend $52 billion over 10 years on a new GI bill guaranteeing college benefits to veterans.
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