http://www.ndol.org/print.cfm?contentid=252647
PPI, et al. | Speech | May 18, 2004 Remarks by Sen. Joseph Lieberman at a Forum on the Fiscal Crisis in the United States Forum: ''Restoring Fiscal Sanity -- While We Still Can'' By Sen. Joseph Lieberman Excerpt: Last month, the Medicare trustees made a shocking finding: currently, the United States government has $72 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That's right: $72 trillion. With a "T". That's a near incomprehensible figure. It is almost seven times our current GDP, and twice the entire net worth of the United States of America. What does that mean? It means that the commitments to our fellow Americans into the future, in the form of Medicare and Social Security entitlement payments, outstrip our predicted revenue by $72 trillion. It obviously puts those entitlements in jeopardy. If the federal government were a business covered by ERISA, it would be in violation of the law. America's growing annual deficits, exploding long-term debt and skyrocketing liabilities are converging with demographic trends to form the perfect economic storm. Unless we take steps immediately to end our current fiscal insanity, we will face unfathomable, impossible choices -- slashing defense and homeland security spending; depriving our children of quality education; reneging on our commitments on Social Security and Medicare; suffering the impact of higher interest rates; raising taxes sky high; or printing money to inflate our way of excessive debt. *** Rest of article at: http://www.ndol.org/print.cfm?contentid=252647 -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/
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