[Bosnjak]

(Interview with Dawid Walker)
WALKER: Good to be with you, Glenn. Like your theme song.

GLENN: Thank you very much. David, do you get a lot of heat from political people for speaking out this way?

WALKER: Glenn, as long as I state the facts, speak the truth, don't blame any particular political party and don't blame any particular person, then I'm fine. And in fact, I'm doing elected officials a favor because the American people need to understand where we are, where we're headed, the need for tough choices and realistically elected officials aren't going to make those tough choices until the people understand the need for them

GLENN: What does that mean to us?

WALKER: Well, what that's going to mean is much higher interest rates that the Government will have to pay in order to borrow money which will have adverse effects on the budget, which will have adverse effects with regard to the overall economy.

GLENN: David, please, please help me out on this. I'm a former deejay. I'm a self-educated guy. I'm a recovering alcoholic, for the love of Pete, and I can understand our economy. But every -- because I look at it like my house. But every economist, every expert, every politician will say, oh, no, well, that's too simple. It doesn't seem -- you are talking about, here come crushing interest rates because we have bad credit. That's what the average homeowner who has bad credit and went out and got a risky loan is facing today.

WALKER: Right.

GLENN: Where is the difference? Why is it more complex than our personal economy?

WALKER: Frankly I think a lot of the economists want to make it more complicated than it really is. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the federal government is spending more money than it takes in. It's charging the national credit card. It's building debt in compounded interest and it's expecting future generations to pay it off. And, you know, our problem is not the current deficits. The deficits we're running now are manageable. Our current debt levels that we have now are manageable. The problem is that even though the deficits have come down for three years in a row, our unfunded promises for Social Security and Medicare have risen dramatically. In our total fiscal hole it is $53 trillion. That's $440,000 per household. So the problem's not where we are, it's not where we've been. It's where we're headed unless we end up making dramatic and fundamental reforms.

GLENN: And see, this is the problem. All the politicians make the deficit, the current deficit the issue and they say these deficit spendings, they're out of control. And I believe they are. And they've got to cut spending in Washington. But the biggest problem that we've had in the last eight years is adding another program like prescription drugs, correct?

WALKER: That was the most fiscally irresponsible act in decades. And when the congress debated that, they only considered the ten-year cost of the program, not the longer term cost. And now we know the price tag for Medicare prescription drugs is over $8 trillion. There's twelve zeros in line with that eight.

GLENN: Give some example. These numbers honestly, David, I think that trillion, I believe growing up, I believe when I was in second grade I think I made up the word trillion and zillion. I didn't think they were real words. So give some concept of what $8 trillion means.

WALKER: Well, I'll give you the $53 trillion that I talked about which is the total unfunded obligations for Medicare, which is $34 trillion. The total unfunded obligation for Social Security which is about 7 plus our debt and other liabilities. $53 trillion is $440,000 per American household. Median household income in America, believe it or not, Glenn, is less than $50,000 a year. So it's like if we just want to continue on our present path, it's like every American household having a mortgage of nine and a half times their annual income for the median household but no house to back that mortgage. That's in addition to all the other debt that they have.

GLENN: It's my understanding when people say tax the rich, they need to pay more, it is my understanding that you could take all of the income, income, not income tax, all of the income generated in this country and still not afford what we have coming.

WALKER: Well, to put it a different way, the $53 trillion is 90% of the estimated total net worth of every American, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and every billionaire. You are not going to tax your way out of this problem. You're not going to grow your way out of this problem. You are not going to do it by con training spending. You are going to have to do a combination of things and the biggest thing is going to be entitlement reform, Social Security and Medicare, healthcare being a much greater challenge. And we need to start soon because time's working against us. That $53 trillion number is going up $2 to $3 trillion a year by doing nothing.

GLENN: Tell me about the -- and listeners, because I don't want to make this political. It tell you, though, behind-the-scenes story on the Menu of Pain on a later episode of the program. But let's just keep it nonpolitical here. Tell me about the Menu of Pain that actually was supposed to be in a federal budget but was buried in a group of actuary tables in the back of the Social Security budget, if I'm not mistaken, but this is telling. It tells you the real story of what you've got to do.

WALKER: Well, we're going to have to do several things. Number one, we're going to have to bring back tough budget controls, tougher than the ones we had in the 1990s. Those ones worked. They took us from deficits to surpluses but they all expired in 2002 and there's been no constraint since then. And so we've got to bring back tough controls. But in addition to that we're going to have to reform Social Security, which frankly is easy and we can talk about that if you want. We're going to have to engage in dramatic healthcare reform in installments and we're going to have to --

Obamas Infrastructure-Plan needs 1 Trillion, the USA spends each year 500 Billions for Millitary and 500 Billions for Intelligence.



The USA reminds on a cold war era relikt. Weapons are more important then Infrastructure and Economy.



I hope that the American people can now sleep in their Tanks.

[PredatorOC]

And you have to remember that the recent spending has added (by some estimates) $8.5 trillion to that figure.