GAO Sees Bleak Fiscal Outlook for US

Booming Baby Boomer retirement, coupled with constantly increasing health care costs, place the U.S. Government on an "imprudent and unsustainable fiscal path," to hard times, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Last month, a Baby Boomer claimed Social Security benefits for the first time. According to the Social Security Administration nearly 80 million Americans will become eligible to apply for Social Security retirement benefits over the next two decades—an average of more than 10,000 per day.

While the potential for a bankrupt Social Security fund is bad enough, the real driver of a very bad fiscal future, says the GAO, is the rapidly growing cost to the government of health care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. "In fact, the federal government’s future obligations for Medicare Part D alone exceed the unfunded obligations for Social Security," reported the GAO.

"By definition, what is unsustainable will not be sustained," writes the GAO in its report The Nation's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook -- January 2008 Update (.pdf). "The question is how and when the nation’s current imprudent and unsustainable path will end."

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