Washington is starting Fiscal 2015 with “no budget, no decisions on how to spend taxpayer money wisely and no credible plan to avoid adding trillions of dollars to the federal debt in the coming decade.”
That troubling critique came in a recent guest column in the Tampa Tribune by Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert L. Bixby and Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Washington is starting Fiscal 2015 with “no budget, no decisions on how to spend taxpayer money wisely and no credible plan to avoid adding trillions of dollars to the federal debt in the coming decade.”
That troubling critique came in a recent guest column in the Tampa Tribune by Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert L. Bixby and Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
They note that some deficit-reduction measures have helped to temporarily slow the growth of the federal debt. But these have focused on defense and domestic discretionary spending, which are not the key drivers of Washington’s projected deficits.
“The many retirees who come to Florida are a reminder of a critical factor: The U.S. population is aging rapidly, with thousands of baby-boomers signing up each day for Social Security and Medicare benefits,” Bixby and Goldwein write. “This means the government must increase spending each year simply to provide the same level of benefits for more people.”
Absent reform, more and more of that money is expected to come from general revenues and additional government borrowing. Goldwein and Bixby also say the tax system should be reformed to reduce hidden spending programs that cut federal revenues by more than $1 trillion a year.
