An inconvenient national debt

Sure, Al Gore might have had penguins and polar bears to show for his documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," but poor former Comptroller General David Walker only has people to protect. In his new film "IOUSA," Walker and the Concord Coalition's Robert Bixby go on a 'fiscal wake-up tour' to explain to U.S. citizens of the perils of ignoring a mounting federal debt -- which now exceeds $9.6 trillion and rises at a rate of $1.85 billion per day (and that's before adding in future entitlements for Medicare and Social Security, which brings it up close to $53 trillion, but who's counting?). Scared yet? You should be! From a Wall Street Journal article:

In the movie, which is co-written by "Empire of Debt" co-author Addison Wiggin and directed by "Wordplay" filmmaker Patrick Creadon, Messrs. Walker and Bixby argue that unless the government alters its policies and spending habits, the U.S. will be in for a serious financial meltdown.

According to Mr. Walker:

"...our concern, quite frankly, is that too much attention has been placed on short-term economic concerns and not nearly enough on a number of large and growing structural problems that will have serious adverse consequences if they're not addressed...

f you look at this year's deficit, as a percentage of the economy, it's not that disturbing. The problem is that we're heading in a wrong direction. When the baby boom generation starts retiring, that will bring a tsunami of [government] spending that we are not prepared for. We are in a $53 trillion hole. And that hole gets deeper $2-3 trillion a year automatically, even if you have a balanced budget. Honestly, since the budget controls expired on December 2002, I think Washington has been totally out of control. They've wanted guns, butter, tax cuts and entitlement expansions...

We're going to have to re-impose tough budget controls -- tougher than the ones we had in the '90s -- because we're in worse shape. Secondly, we're going to have to reform Social Security, Medicare, and the entire health-care system. Thirdly, we're going to have to engage in comprehensive tax reform. And lastly, we're going to have to look at the base of the federal government, because it's grown very much out of shape.

I think there is also a cultural problem here. I think the federal government is doing an extremely poor job of managing its finances, and unfortunately, too many Americans have been following this bad example, spending more money than they make, and mortgaging their future. And there has to be a behavioral change. One of our biggest concerns is also the savings deficit. Generally, Americans are very prolific at spending and not very good at saving, and that's caused us to increasingly rely on foreign lenders to finance our deficits. That's not in our [best] long-term economic or geopolitical interests...

Neither one of the presidential candidates has addressed fiscal responsibility and intergenerational equity. We are hopeful that as a result of the film and a number of other efforts, that these issues will be a higher priority in the election campaign. There has been some talk of a commission proposal, and taxes and health care, but it's been piecemeal...

It's fine for them to talk about what needs to be done in the short term, but not to the exclusion of what needs to be done to address the real disease. Leadership is all about helping people look broader and longer. For me, we haven't learned the lessons from the past. And the most recent lesson is that the factors that resulted in the current mortgage-based subprime crisis exist with regard to the federal government's finances. And we're not addressing them. The type of economic disruption we can get is much, much, much greater than what we're currently facing. It's time that we had some leadership to start addressing it...

In the case of "The Inconvenient Truth," you had the penguins and the polar bears to help visualize the consequences. In ours, we're talking about human beings. Hopefully, people care about them, too."