While the numbers may be big and people may differ over the term 'crisis,' a $43 trillion shortfall is a large and rapidly increasing portion of the Gross Domestic Product...but I suppose people don't know what that is either.
"Based on such assumptions by the trustees - which stir criticism from administration critics - this year's forecast turned downward. Over a 75-year period ahead, trustees say the program needs a revenue infusion of $4 trillion to pay all scheduled benefits. This unfunded obligation is $300 billion higher than the amount estimated last year.
When Medicare, the nation's other huge entitlement program, is added in, the problem multiplies: There's a $43 trillion gap between government's promised liabilities (mainly Social Security and Medicare), and the money it's expected to take in over the next 75 years, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The nation's fiscal path is 'unsustainable,' says David Walker, who was appointed by President Clinton to a 15-year term as head of the GAO.
To cover a shortfall that size, Washington would have to double payroll taxes, increase federal income taxes by up to 78 percent, or cut Social Security and Medicare benefits in half, according to economists Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale, who studied the issue for the Treasury Department."
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