Soaring debt, massive expansion of federal entitlements, and airbrushing hard, fiscal reality:
The federal government keeps two sets of books.
The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.
The set the government doesn’t talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government’s accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included ‚Äî as the board that sets accounting rules is considering ‚Äî the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.
We should definitely include Medicare and Social Security in the numbers. The Bush administration isn’t the only administration to have fiddled with fiscal numbers. But the crisis is growing; and their obliviousness is unnerving. This isn’t conservatism. It’s big government recklessness. It needs to be stopped.
The Dish 