Charles Skelley: Confronting the Problems

Charles Skelley originally posted this in the comments section. Project White House has transformed it into a post.

Charles Skelley is running for President of the US in the Arizona Republican primary, and proposing solutions to a wide variety of problems in the US.He aims to reduce the cost of Healthcare in the US to 11% of GNP (from its current status at 16% of GNP).“Unfunded Liabilities” have been paralyzing the Federal Government in recent years. Mr. Skelley will confront this problem, whereas the other Presidential candidates are ignoring the problem. A July 24, 2007 editorial in the Washington Times pointed out the Unfunded Liabilities of the Federal Government have reached $90 Trillion when expressed in 2007 dollars, and also pointed out that $90 Trillion is more than all the assets combined in the USA.

….now is a good time to talk about the $90 trillion Social Security and Medicare elephant in the room. It is a virtual certainty that both political parties will ignore it, at least until the next president is inaugurated 19 months from now. Oh, there will be rhetorical heat during the presidential and congressional campaigns. But in terms of substantive, responsible legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president, expect nothing — zilch.
….To appreciate the relative size of the $90 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, consider four facts: (1) This year’s entire U.S. economic output, measured by its gross domestic product, will be $14 trillion. (2) Today, the total U.S. public debt outstanding (i.e., the “national debt”) is $8.8 trillion, which, despite having skyrocketed by $3.1 trillion (54 percent) since Mr. Bush entered office, is still less than 10 percent of the present value of the entitlement nightmare galloping toward us. (3) The total net worth (as of March 31) of all U.S. households and nonprofit organizations, including their stockholdings, corporate and Treasury bondholdings, housing equity, SUVs and high-definition plasma TVs, is $56.2 trillion. (4) The total market capitalization (number of stock shares times the share price) of the S & P 500 (the 500 leading U.S. corporations) was $12.7 trillion as of March 31.

The bipartisan, presidential-congressional abdication of long-term fiscal responsibility that we shall witness over the next year and a half will be nothing less than incomprehensible.