Gao report: Obama's policies 'not sustainable

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
GAO REPORT: OBAMA'S POLICIES 'NOT SUSTAINABLE



For two months, reporters and lawmakers have ignored a devastating report from the federal government itself, which warns that the nation's current fiscal policy will lead to economic collapse.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO)—the personal auditor of President Obama and the federal government—released its assessment of the federal government on January 17, 2013. The report's findings illuminate just how dire America's spending problem is and, therefore, how little the current cuts debated by Congress do to fix it.

The findings of the paper include these excerpts (emphasis added):


  • “The projections in this Report indicate that current policy is not sustainable... Preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years is estimated to require some combination of spending reductions and revenue increases that amount to 2.7 percent of GDP over the period.”
  • “It is estimated that running primary surpluses that average 1.0 percent of GDP over the next 75 years would result in the 2087 debt-to-GDP ratio equaling its level in fiscal year 2012, which compares with primary deficits that average 1.7 percent of GDP under current policies.”
  • “It is noteworthy that preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years requires that primary surpluses be substantially positive on average. This is true because projected GDP growth is on average smaller than the projected government borrowing rate over the next 75 years.”
  • “If the primary surplus was precisely zero in every year, then debt would grow at the rate of interest in every year, which would be faster than GDP growth.”
  • “The differences between the primary surplus boost starting in 2023 and 2033 (3.2 and 4.1 percent of GDP, respectively) and the primary surplus boost starting in 2012 (2.7 percent of GDP) is a measure of the additional burden policy delay would impose on future generations. Future generations are harmed by a policy delay of this sort, because the higher the primary surplus is during their lifetimes the greater the difference is between the taxes they pay and the programmatic spending from which they benefit.”
 

bcp

In My Opinion

Its not that GURPS, or you or me or even Elmendorf is wrong, its just that none of us understand economics as well as Tommyboy.
I tried to point this out to him earlier, and he insisted that the war spending President Bush did was far worse than a never ending always increasing program like welfarecare is going to be.

If Elmendorf is fired, I suspect Tommyboy will be one of the first interviews for the postion. right behind JPC.
 
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