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« Power Up Friday: Thinkin' 'bout home edition | Main | 12 People who Are Changing Aging »
February 18, 2008 |Permalink |Comments (4)
GAO Head David Walker is Out
Here is the news...
David M. Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, announced Friday that he would resign his position effective March 12 to head a new foundation.Walker, who has served as comptroller general since late 1998, will be president and chief executive officer of the Peter G. Peterson foundation, which GAO said will be dedicated to "seeking and supporting sensible policy solutions to a range of sustainability and transformation challenges."
Walker said Peterson, senior chairman of the Blackstone Group, a financial services firm headquartered in New York, and former Commerce secretary and Council on Foreign Relations chairman, asked him to head the new foundation within the last few months, and he was undecided until very recently.
Why should you care?
The nation's top accountant has watched with growing alarm as the amount of money the country owes has skyrocketed."We're underwater to the tune of $50 trillion, and that number is going up three to four trillion a year on autopilot. So we need to start getting serious soon in order to make sure that our future is better than our past," David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, told CNN in a recent interview.
As of March 1, 2007, the federal debt was $8.78 trillion -- $5 trillion of which was treasury bills, bonds and other securities held by entities outside the government.
The figure Walker cites includes future payments that government entitlement programs would have to pay, including $32 trillion owed by Medicare.
Federal spending on Medicare, and also Social Security and Medicaid, will increase dramatically as the programs expand to accommodate the large baby boomer population, Walker said in testimony on January 2007 before the Senate Budget Committee. The baby boomers become eligible in 2008 for Social Security and in 2011 for Medicare.
The increase in federal spending on those programs, along with rising health care costs, and a burgeoning population with longer life expectancies, could make the debt unsustainable over the next 20 years, Walker said.
So, in an attempt to educate Americans about this "long-range problem," Walker has embarked on a national expedition of sorts over the last year, conducting town hall meetings in 19 states on the shape of the federal deficit. He calls it a "fiscal wakeup tour."
Hey we are proud that he brought that tour right to the UMBC campus. Those interested in getting a Fiscal Wakeup can watch the whole show right here:
But the question is -- what's next?
From DailyKos...
The head of the GAO is resigning. That means Bush may get the chance to appoint his successor for a fifteen-year term as the federal government's chief watch dog.
Ouch...
Comments ( 4)
I always wondered how David Walker stayed in his job, knowing what he does and speaking out about it. So it's a good news; bad news thing. Finally, David Walker is on the right side of things, oddly enough, hopefully able to do more on the outside, than he could on the inside. As for Bush appointing his successor. Frightening.
Posted by
Judith Shapiro
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.umbc.edu/blogs/changingaging/nav-commenters.gif)
February 18, 2008 9:44 AM
YIKES. Congress must have oversight over this appointment???
According to Fox News.com, "Peterson, senior chairman of The Blackstone Group and former Commerce Department secretary, has pledged to contribute $1 billion over the next few years to the foundation, which is to focus on such national sustainability issues as entitlement program and health care costs, trade and budget deficits, energy consumption and the education system." I see this as a positive move for Walker in his quest to get the word out about the state of the federal budget. What's needed however, more than scary facts and figures understood by only a small fraction of the population, is an education effort that reaches the 'common man' -- a message that resonates so well that people will demand change from their politicans. Walker tried to do that with his fiscal wake-up tour - citing how the government is, in essence, stealing from our children. We know the numbers look bad. The challenge is how does one LEAD the people of this country to accept responsibility for today's debt and take on the pain to correct it.
Check out this very up-to-date website for a sobering reminder of how grave our national debt really is. Scarey that none of the presidential candidates will even begin to address this issue but they will talk about spending more money.