Ex-GAO Head: US Debt Is Three Times More Than
You Think
By Bradford Richardson
November 08, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "The
Hill"
- The former U.S. comptroller general says the real U.S. debt is
closer to about $65 trillion than the oft-cited figure of $18
trillion.
Dave Walker, who headed the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) under Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush, said when you add up all of the nation’s
unfunded liabilities, the national debt is more than three times
the number generally advertised.“If you
end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and
military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional
underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding
for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the
federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion
rather than $18 trillion, and it’s growing automatically absent
reforms,” Walker told host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats
Roundtable” on New York’s AM-970 in an interview airing Sunday.
The former comptroller general, who is in charge
of ensuring federal spending is fiscally responsible, said a
burgeoning national debt hampers the ability of government to
carry out both domestic and foreign policy initiatives.
“If you don’t keep your economy strong, and that
means to be able to generate more jobs and opportunities, you’re
not going to be strong internationally with regard to foreign
policy, you’re not going to be able to invest what you need to
invest in national defense and homeland security, and ultimately
you’re not going to be able to provide the kind of social safety
net that we need in this country,” he said.
He said Americans have “lost touch with reality”
when it comes to spending.
Walker called for Democrats and Republicans to
put aside partisan politics to come together to fix the
problem.
“You can be a Democrat, you can be a Republican,
you can be unaffiliated, you can be whatever you want, but your
duty of loyalty needs to be to country rather than to party, and
we need to solve some of the large, known, and growing problems
that we have,” he said.©2015 Capitol
Hill Publishing Corp.
