They're inheriting a share of a national entitlement liability that's worth $175,000 per person, yet they're too young to have a voice in the matter.
The crying part is a joke, of course, but not the liability part.
That's the per capita slice of the $52.7 trillion hole that the U.S. has
accumulated in unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Social Security and other
federal programs, Walker says.
He's the U.S. comptroller general and head of the Government Accountability
Office - a man on a mission of raising awareness over the massive debt time
bomb.
The clock is ticking, he says, with perhaps five to 10 years left to fix the
problem. Failure to do so could lead to a run on the dollar, financial-market
shocks, serious economic problems and a notable drop in living standards.
Walker believes Social Security's financial ills are relatively simple and -
at $7 trillion or so - fairly manageable. Still, they require a bipartisan
resolve that so far hasn't materialized.
Medicare's problems are more serious, accounting for $34 trillion of the
liability.
"Health care is the real problem," Walker said during a recent talk to
Scottsdale Boomerz and Scottsdale Leadership, two civic groups. "It could
bankrupt America."
Walker and Harry Zeeve, national field director for the nonpartisan Concord
Coalition, have been visiting various cities on a national "wake-up tour" over
the debt/entitlement problem. They even appear in a new documentary film
called I.O.U.S.A., which hasn't yet been released.
Although unfunded entitlements haven't yet emerged as a major
presidential-campaign issue, people are taking notice.
"It's frightening, terrifying," said Sarah Nolan, a Scottsdale mother of three
children. "I'd be willing to make some sacrifices for my kids and their
children."
Mary Way, another mother of three who lives in Paradise Valley, feels many
Americans are in denial on the issue.
"Because the debt is so huge, it's hard to intellectualize," she said. "When
you feel you can't fix something, you tend to put it on the back burner."
Nolan and Way both attended the Sundance Film Festival where they viewed a
screening of I.O.U.S.A.
Brad Taft, a Scottsdale workplace consultant, said he would like to see more
young seniors stay on the job. This would help the entitlement-debt problem in
several ways, he says.
"Those people will continue earning money and paying taxes on it," said Taft,
who attended the Scottsdale talk. "And studies have shown that the longer
people work and stay active, the healthier they'll be."
Walker insists the problem can be fixed with committed leadership in
Washington and an electorate that allows politicians to make tough choices.
Regarding Social Security, he suggests several reforms including a gradual
increase in the retirement age, a modest adjustment of automatic
cost-of-living hikes and increases in the taxable wage base.
He also supports supplemental individual accounts to be funded by additional,
mandatory worker contributions through payroll deductions, with the money
going into "real investments" along the lines of the Federal Thrift Saving
Plan.
Health-care spending is the more pressing problem, exacerbated by the adoption
of Medicare Part D prescription-drug benefits, which Walker says created an
unfunded liability that's already larger than that for Social Security.
"It was the poster child for political irresponsibility, done purely for
political reasons," he said of the legislation.
On health care, Walker suggests more than a dozen reforms such as creating
greater cost transparency, revising tax breaks that encourage inefficient
expenditures, limiting federal spending growth for health programs to a
specific percentage of the budget or economy and banning prescription-drug
ads, which he says fuel medical inflation.
Walker and Zeeve say there are reasons for optimism.
For example, they cite a bipartisan accord in 1983 that averted a crisis by
putting Social Security on sounder footing at the time.
But they also hope the country won't ignore these problems until we're on the
verge of the next crisis. There's no better time to start paying attention
than now with presidential and congressional elections in the works.
Reach Wiles at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com
or 602-444-8616.