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Required Reading for Presidential Candidates
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by YankeeJim | January 31, 2012 at 04:59 pm
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By the time that candidates are declared, I would hope they have done their homework and are prepared to glide into office with an operational cabinet and management approach. We the People need to address qualifications most diligently in that regard. We expected President Obama to solve the economic disaster in 100 days didn’t we?
You bet, reading the Congressional Budget Office report on the state of the economy is essential reading. So is reading the budget and knowing Constitutional Law. Most of the candidates running for office in Congress and for the Presidency haven’t a clue about the details. Mitt Romney reads and it is reflected in his plan. President Obama is current as reflected in his incumbency.
“CBO Report Should Be Required Reading for Candidates
The Congressional Budget Office today released new projections that should spur candidates for federal office to provide voters with realistic proposals to meet the country’s fiscal challenges.
Robert L. Bixby, The Concord Coalition’s executive director, said the CBO’s new Budget and Economic Outlook should be “required reading” on the campaign trail. “Among the risks we face this year,” he added, “are unrealistic campaign promises that fail to take into account the harsh realities reflected in this report. And sooner rather than later, the heated rhetoric of the campaign will run into the cold reality of these numbers.”
Even with some fairly optimistic assumptions, the CBO report projects steady growth in the federal debt over the next decade. Under current law the deficits over the next 10 years would total $3.1 trillion.
Concord’s Plausible Baseline, which applies more realistic assumptions, shows annual deficits remaining in the trillion-dollar range throughout the next decade, totaling almost $12 trillion.
These new projections underscore the need for Washington to move forward on fiscal reform this year, despite the difficulties of doing so in an election year.
“The CBO’s report, along with The Concord Coalition’s own projections, show that we cannot get the federal budget under control by just economizing here and there, or by simply focusing on the politicians’ favorite target: waste, fraud and abuse,” Bixby said.
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf is scheduled to testify this week before the House and Senate Budget Committees.
Read more with Concord Coalition Says New CBO Report Should Be Required Reading On the Campaign Trail”
Via the Concord Coalition
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"thirty-aught-six" (not verified)at 21:42 on January 31st, 2012
Lessons learned from the US-GAO Fiscal Wake-up Tour- 1/ The combination of the "big three" entitlements – Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid – will double from the current 8 percent of GDP to 15 percent when today’s newborn graduates from college, to nearly 20 percent of GDP when today's college graduate reaches retirement in 2050. 2/ The unfunded federal future obligations of the federal government are now the equivalent of a mortgage of over $50 trillion ($38.8 trillion of which is due to Medicare and Social Security). This translates into a financial burden of $170,000 for each and every American. 3/ Without reform of entitlements, balancing the budget would mean driving up taxes dramatically to 3x their levels.