Reader Responses

Failure of U.S. public policy (federal, state and local) has created perilous social and economic conditions that have accelerated beyond control.

Groundwork for these dire conditions has evolved with defective policies begun during the Great Depression. The age of citizen virtue has been replaced by an age of consumerism characterized by greed, manipulation and power stimulated by phony money and faulty tax and welfare laws.

This generation's buy now, pay later consumers realize and have accepted the notion any acceptable means of adjustment is now possible. This began when responsible citizenship was gradually replaced by consumers who, for the first time, were able to spend without benefit of savings; such was the power of the new plastic redeemable for goods and services worldwide. With this evolved the new American debt-slave. Buying stuff we don't need with money we don't have has become the American way of life.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently asked Congress to increase the government debt ceiling by $850 billion from $8.965 trillion to $9.82 trillion, the fifth increase since Bush took office in 2001. It took this country 205 years (1776 to 1981) to accumulate $1 trillion in government debt that is limited by "statute," often referred to as the Public or National Debt. It has taken only 26 years to exceed $9 trillion, an 800 percent increase. At a 5 percent rate, the interest expense is $450 billion.

The $9 trillion federal debt is the tip of the iceberg. Total contractual American Debt (federal/state/local plus federal debt to trust funds, business, household, domestic financial sectors) exceeds $50 trillion. The Net Present Value (projected future expenditures less future revenues, in current dollars) of under-funded U.S. government explicit and implicit obligations such as Military and Civil Service retirement programs, Social Security, Medicare, etc., add another $45 trillion to the nation's debt.

Total American debt can conservatively estimated at no less than $100 trillion. Not included are costs of means-tested Social Insurance entitlements such as Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, State Children's Health Insurance Program, Veterans' medical and pension benefits, plus discretionary government subsidies.

Also not included are other discretionary government expenses.

Defective public policy has created an accounting charade that is impenetrable. The bottom line is it is impossible to measure an accurate amount of total debt and cost of future obligations being passed on to the next generation of taxpayers. That fact will not forever escape the attention of domestic and foreign lenders or bond rating services.

John T. Koraska
Tyler