Balanced Budget economists terrified of American finances

How bad are American finances?

To hear Walker, the nation's top auditor, tell it, the United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its financial condition is "worse than advertised," he says. It has a "broken business model." It faces deficits in its budget, its balance of payments, its savings — and its leadership.

Walker's not the only one saying it. As Congress and the White House struggle to trim up to $50 billion from the federal budget over five years — just 3% of the $1.6 trillion in deficits projected for that period — budget experts say the nation soon could face its worst fiscal crisis since at least 1983, when Social Security bordered on bankruptcy.

Without major spending cuts, tax increases or both, the national debt will grow more than $3 trillion through 2010, to $11.2 trillion — nearly $38,000 for every man, woman and child. The interest alone would cost $561 billion in 2010, the same as the Pentagon.

Like so many disasters in which Bush has ignored warnings and led the nation into, this set of disasters in predictable, inevitable, and could mostly have been headed off under a responsible administration.

The trouble is, even if Bush listens and recognizes the problems, the solutions he will propose will be nothing more than political wedge issue aimed at winning the next election and unacceptable to most of America. George W. Bush is the worst President ever to damage America!

Go read the whole thing at USA Today.