At a time of year when most average folks are pinching pennies to put gas in the car, buy heating oil and buy their fair share of Xmas crap, the federal government is spending money like a drunk sailor and guess what? No accountability! Whoo-haa, let the spending continue!
Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office issued its annual report on the state of our nation’s budget and for the 11th year in a row, the gubmint failed to provide a coherent accounting of its spending.
The $8 trillion gap in Medicare was not disclosed or discussed until after Congress had voted on the bill and the president had signed it into law.
“If the federal government was a private corporation and the same report came out this morning, our stock would be dropping and there would be talk about whether the company’s management and directors needed a major shake-up,” Comptroller General David Walker said yesterday in a speech at the National Press Club.
The GAO also said it could not even express an opinion on the government’s fiscal 2007 consolidated financial statements, mostly due — surprise — to the Defense Department’s financial management problems. The numbers are staggering:
The federal government’s total liabilities and unfunded commitments for future payments related to Social Security and Medicare are now estimated at $53 trillion, in current dollar terms, up from $20 trillion in 2000, Walker said.
Medicare accounts for $34 trillion of the gap, according to GAO. Baby boomers, some of whom will start to draw early retirement benefits in a few weeks, “will bring a tsunami of spending” as they retire, Walker said.
But Walker saved his most pointed criticisms for the administration’s push through on the Medicare coverage for prescription drugs passed in 2003:
With Bush administration officials looking on, Walker took particular aim at the White House’s prescription drug benefit program and the way the administration sold the plan. [Prescription drugs are] worth about $8 trillion of the gap created by Medicare, according to GAO.
“Incredibly, this number was not disclosed or discussed until after Congress had voted on the bill and the president had signed it into law,” Walker noted. “In many ways, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug episode represents government truth and transparency at its worst,” he added.
Truth and transparency, indeed. Those were the first casualties of the Bush administration in all aspects of its governance, and now we’re all going to have to pay for it for a very long time.
