On Jan 31, 2008, David Walker’s presentation of his “Wake Up” tour was delivered in Tucson to a fully packed auditorium. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords arranged for David Walker (the head of the Government Accountability Office) to come to Tucson and give us his “Fiscal Responsibility Wake Up” seminar.
While the crowd was drifting into the auditorium, Congresswoman Giffords sought me out in the crowd to say “Hello”. She said she had read on our blog that I would be attending the presentation.
The audience was very receptive to David Walker’s message. His role in this “Wake Up” tour is to be impartial and to show that Federal “big-spending” programs are tearing our country apart. The timetable which he offered during his Tucson presentation is that the US will be bankrupt somewhere between 5 and 10 years in the future, if we do not get major reforms immediately for the so-called entitlement programs. He expressed concern that Congress lacks major bipartisan effort today for dealing with these bankrupting issues.
One of his points was that Medicare in the US has been organized as a “blank check”; and he pointed out that no other country runs its health care programs without a pre-defined budget. He suggested that Medicare probably needs to be reformed 4 times to bring it under stable cost control . I was very pleased to hear this comment about Medicare, because my own Square Deal program has recommended 4 rounds of cost-cutting for Medicare.
Also David Walker emphasized that the US needs its President to use the visibility of the presidential office as a “bully Pulpit”, if necessary, to get Congress to reform itself and adopt fiscal responsibility.
The audience had dozens of questions for David Walker during the Question and Answer part of the presentation.
The question that I asked was whether I can submit my Presidential program’s economic reforms to be evaluated by the GAO. David Walker’s answer was no — because the GAO does not take any positions on political issues.
This response to my question was both interesting and disturbing. It demonstrates that members of the Federal Government (including also the new candidates for public offices) are somehow forbidden to receive feedback about which government policies are fiscally self-destructive. Although this is very disturbing, I believe it explains why various candidates for public office are still recommending expensive Federal activities, at a time when the Federal Government needs to be adopting austerity programs if the US is to survive in its present form.
