WE WANT MORE GOVERNMENT WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT

The easiest way to measure the size of government is to compare the federal budget with the overall economy, or gross domestic product (GDP). The CBO's estimates are daunting. At our current rate of spending:

• Balancing the budget in 2020 would require a tax increase of almost 50 percent from the past half century's average.
• To get from 18 to 26 percent of GDP (spending in 2020) would require another 8 percent of GDP in taxes.
• In today's dollars, that would be about $1.1 trillion, a 44 percent annual tax increase.

Even these figures may be optimistic, because the CBO's projections for defense and "nondefense discretionary spending" may be unrealistically low. This last category covers everything from environmental regulation to aid to education to homeland security.

Whatever the case, the major causes of the budget blowout are well known: an aging population and rapid increases in health spending...

[We are bankrupting ourselves because folks aren't willing to face reality.]

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For CBO report
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