CEDAR RAPIDS -- While presidential candidates continue bombarding Iowans with promises of more programs and lower taxes, members of The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour are telling Iowans the United States cannot afford what it has already promised.

This is not some rock band tour. It's a group of fiscal experts led by U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, and the tune they are playing is that the U.S. government's explicit future liabilities have a present value of $53 trillion -- and we don't have the money.

The $53 trillion hole, as Walker calls it, up from $20 trillion seven years ago, includes government liabilities such as the $9 trillion national debt. Most of the rest comes from future Social Security and Medicare benefits fueled by soaring health-care costs. That's like a $170,000 home mortgage for every American, but without a house, Walker said.

With all the baby boomers now coming into early retirement age and soon to Medicare age, it's going to get worse, warns Walker, the government's chief accountability officer.

"It goes up $2 trillion to $3 trillion every year -- even if you balanced the budget tomorrow," Walker told The Gazette's Editorial Board on Monday. "We have spending liberals and taxing conservatives. The government is spending our kids' and grandkids' money and expects them to pay it back with interest and they can't vote (yet)."

Walker and his cohorts, Robert Bixby of Concord Coalition, Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation and Jason Furman of the Brookings Institute, were to speak last night in Iowa City.

Their preferred solutions include a tough health care budget that forces choices and trade-offs; more personal responsibility for one's health; tough budget controls; Social Security reform; reform of the entire health care system; and reform of the tax code to generate more revenue.
 

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