Our
current political leaders and their political parties are heading us
towards financial ruin and if we don't do something about it soon our
children and their children will have much lower standards of living.
The
Republicans and Democrats will never fix the problem as long as they
can point at the other party as the cause of the problems and never
accept blame themselves. What we
need is a true, independent President to force the two parties to get
together and work on the problem. I
say it can be done through coercion or shame or both, but it will take
an independent to do it who doesn't care about getting party members
elected, who doesn't care about the next election, show doesn't care
about who caused the problem, but who only cares about what is right
for the future of all Americans and fixing things now.
I, Frank
McEnulty, promise to be that President for you.
Please
see the
below article for why we all need to be very afraid for our financial
futures and why something needs to be done in the next election for
President to change the situation.
From: McClatchy
Newspapers 2007
WASHINGTON
- As presidential candidates largely ignore the issue, looming fiscal
challenges threaten to swamp the U.S. economy and erode America's
superpower status, several of the nation's foremost experts on the
federal budget warned Wednesday.
"We
have been diagnosed with fiscal cancer," said David Walker, the
nation's comptroller general, or chief auditor, testifying before the
Senate Budget Committee.
The
committee called the hearing to spotlight legislation that would create
a bipartisan panel charged with recommending how to tackle promised
spending on federal retirement programs that threaten to bankrupt the
U.S. government.
"In
the very least, it ought to be the framework that a new Congress and
new president put in place," said Leon Panetta, co-chairman of the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and Clinton-era budget
director.
Starting
in 2017, Social Security will pay out more than it takes in from tax
revenues. Over the next 75 years, that could add $4.7 trillion in
present-day value to the federal debt.
However,
that pales when compared with projected government health-care spending
on retiring baby boomers, the more than 75 million Americans born from
1946 to 1964. Boomer retirement is projected to cost the Medicare
system and state-managed Medicaid $33.9 trillion in present value over
the next 75 years.
Unless
changes are made to benefits and/or revenues, within the next three
decades government spending on Social Security and Medicare could
account for $1 of every $5 spent in the U.S. economy.
No
major presidential candidate has put forward a detailed plan to fix
Social Security and Medicare's long-term finances. Many of them
acknowledge that there's a pending problem, but they confine their
remedies to vague goals they'll seek or modest halfway measures.
Meanwhile,
experts say, mounting pressures to spend ever more on health care,
fewer active workers to pay taxes to sustain retirees' benefits and
growing interest payments on the national debt all could combine to
create an unparalleled economic crisis.
If
spending on government retirement programs remains on its current
course and revenues grow at their historical averages, interest on the
debt could grow to nearly 30 percent of the budget by 2040, up sharply
from around 9 percent now, the Government Accountability Office
estimates.
"Nobody
can say when all of this might end up in a crisis," warned Bob Bixby,
the head of the budget watchdog group Concord Coalition. Instead of a
dramatic flash point, he said, the growing fiscal challenges could mean
"a long, slow erosion in the standard of living."
That
erosion threatens national security, budget experts warned, because the
United States - the world's sole superpower - would slip in stature and
see a fast-growing China, a prosperous but aging Europe and a
resurgent, nationalistic Russia challenge its economic might. Daily
headlines show that it's already begun.
Despite
such weighty fiscal challenges, politicians driven by short-term
election goals focus on short-term problems. President Bush touts the
now-shrinking annual federal budget deficit, the amount that annual
spending exceeds tax receipts. The deficit fell from a high of $413
billion in fiscal 2004 to about $163 billion in fiscal 2007.
But
that masks what's happened to the gross federal debt, the sum of
outstanding debt issued by the federal government. Since fiscal 2001,
the federal debt has soared from $5.8 trillion to $8.9 trillion.
Ignoring
debt offers a false sense of security, Walker warned. He said that
unfunded liabilities - costs such as Social Security benefits that the
government has promised boomers but hasn't begun paying yet - grew by
$3 trillion in fiscal 2007 to $53 trillion.
"Health-care
costs are the key fiscal problem for the budget," said Bill Novelli,
the chief executive officer of AARP, the powerful lobby for seniors. He
urged lawmakers to look beyond simplistic solutions such as reducing
benefits or tweaking revenues. What's needed, he said, is an effective
method to contain health-care costs, which are rising much faster than
inflation or wages.
The
proposal for the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action
comes from Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the
chairman and the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.
"I
think we're reaching a defining moment," Conrad warned the assembled
budget experts, who all agreed that tough decisions must be made sooner
rather than later.
In
January, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told senators that the
right time to start addressing fiscal challenges "is about 10 years
ago."
McClatchy Newspapers
2007
We are still over a
year away from the 2008 Presidential Election and a lot can and will
happen in that year. I
greatly appreciate your support and trust that you will continue to let
people know about my campaign so we can make a difference in the
upcoming election.
"Anything
is Possible in America"
