U.S. chief auditor leaves, giving dire warning about national debt

U.S. chief auditor leaves, giving dire warning about national debt | By David S. Broader | 16/03/08 "Washington Post"
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As the head of the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, Walker has been perhaps the most outspoken official in Washington warning of the fiscal train wreck that awaits this country unless it mends its ways.

The budget resolutions approved last week both envisage an increase in the deficit next year. The Senate predicts $366 billion, the House $340 billion. Meanwhile, over the next five years, independent estimates are that the national debt, already $9 trillion, will grow by $2 trillion more. Almost half the government debt owed to banks or individuals is held by foreign creditors, notably China, Japan and the OPEC nations, up from 13 percent five years ago.

Both resolutions forecast a balanced budget in 2012, but they use the same dubiously optimistic assumptions President Bush employed to make the same claim for his tax-and-spending proposal. Once again, the hard choices are being pushed off to some hazy future.

For much of his nine years as comptroller general, and with increasing urgency in recent times, Walker has been warning policymakers in Washington and audiences around the country that this nation is courting disaster by not paying its bills.

Last week, he cautioned in a speech that "largely due to the aging of the baby boomers and rising health care costs, the United States faces decades of red ink. . . . If the United States continues as it has, policymakers will eventually have to raise taxes or slash government services that U.S. citizens depend on and take for granted. . . . Over time, the U.S. government could be reduced to doing little more than mailing out Social Security checks to retirees and paying interest on the massive national debt."

Even as a nonpartisan employee of Congress, Walker has been blunt enough to say, again and again, that "at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and on both sides of the political aisle, there are too few leaders who face the facts" about this fiscal mess. ...