Fiscal Wake-up Tour: Trouble ahead
Next week, a group of fiscal prophets will take the pulpit in Seattle. These are not mystic seers peering into invisible crystals. Instead, they grasp a simple premise: The federal government's revenues do not match spending promises made to future generations.
"Our nation is about to undergo an unprecedented demographic transformation -- with no idea of how to pay for it," one of the prophets, Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, wrote recently. "The coming age wave is not a temporary challenge that will recede once the baby boom generation passes away. The boomers' retirement is ushering in a permanent transformation to an older population -- and a permanent rise in the cost of programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."
It's that unpleasant but hard fact that portends an American dream that is no longer sustainable -- unless we, as a nation, make substantive changes.
The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour is a broad, bipartisan coalition. In addition to Bixby, the Seattle tour includes Comptroller General David Walker of the Government Accountability Office, Diane Lim Rogers from the Brookings Institution and Alison Fraser from The Heritage Foundation.
This Fiscal Wake-up Tour represents a conversation essential to our democracy and every citizen ought to pay attention.