[Vision2020] Fw: A TRILLION AND ONE WAYS TO FISCAL DISASTER

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From: "Crapo News Release (Crapo)" newsclips at crapo.senate.gov
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:59:47 -0800
To: 
Subject: A TRILLION AND ONE WAYS TO FISCAL DISASTER

FOR RELEASE 	                               CONTACT:   Susan Wheeler
(202) 224-5150
Week of February 17, 2008		      Laura Thurston Goodroe
(202) 224-7500

                      A TRILLION AND ONE WAYS TO FISCAL DISASTER
                    Guest opinion submitted by Idaho Senator Mike Crapo

What's a trillion?  National Public Radio's Science Friday calculated
that one trillion dollars would buy 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies
for every person in the United States.  A Massachusetts Institute of
Technology researcher calculated that a trillion grains of Morton salt
would fill an elementary school classroom.  Salt and cookies, in
reasonable amounts, are not bad things.  The same goes for federal
budget expenditures.  But a $3.1 trillion dollar budget for Fiscal Year
2009 exceeds comprehension and reason.    

The short- and long-term economic and spending realities that accompany
this astronomical budget are dismaying.  In the short term, we're facing
a serious slowing of our economy.  In the long term, there will be a
critical shortage in entitlement programs due to population changes and
the fact that, among other things, these programs use funding models
decades that are out-of-date.  Considering the tightening economy and
increasing strains on the federal budget, we cannot realistically
entertain tax increases or continue to spend beyond our means.  That's
how we got here in the first place.  Not only do we need to control
taxation and spending, we must firmly address a rapidly-approaching
unsustainable Medicare and Medicaid system and fiscal challenges to
Social Security.  This year, entitlement program spending and national
debt interest payments account for almost two-thirds of the budget.  As
in past years, costs associated with entitlement programs are growing,
not stabilizing or shrinking-Social Security Trustees predict that the
Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted in 34 years.  

Since the President released his Fiscal Year 2009 Budget, the Budget
Committee has held a series of hearings to determine a spending plan for
Congress, whose job it is to responsibly allocate hard-earned taxpayer
dollars.  In a recent Finance Committee hearing, I asked Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson about one proposal in the President's budget
that aims to reduce the rate of growth in Medicare spending by just 2.2
percent over the next five years.  Secretary Paulson reaffirmed the
increase in Medicare costs due to demographics and health care costs and
observed that this slight reduction in growth--$178 billion over the
next five years-will address $34 trillion in as-yet-unfunded Medicare
costs predicted to accumulate over the next 75 years.

In addition to producing a responsible budget with well-defined spending
parameters, my colleagues and I on the Budget and Finance committees
have an obligation to put partisan politics aside and seriously discuss
our nation's tax policy.  I've been asked to serve on the Senate
Republican Fiscal Reform Working Group, which was created by Senate
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to make recommendations on how to
bring greater transparency and taxpayer confidence to federal spending.
As a fiscal conservative and strong advocate for public accountability,
I'm looking forward to doing just that.  Concerning tax reform, I
continue to support legislation to permanently repeal the Alternative
Minimum Tax and make tax relief from 2001 and 2003 permanent.  The
Chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus from Montana, has
promised to work on compromise legislation to address the unfair,
disastrous death tax.  

As the Senate sets its federal budget blueprint for FY 2009, I intend to
be a voice for restraint and responsible spending.  As demonstrated by a
few unconventional illustrations above, a trillion doesn't have much
meaning in the context of our daily lives.  But the fact is our nation
runs on a budget of that magnitude, and we need to aggressively monitor
and responsibly direct how those dollars are collected and spent.  

WORD COUNT: 578

To link directly to this news release, please go to:
http://crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases/release_full.cfm?id=292887&&

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