TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff estimates the net present value of the gap between government spending and revenues is $202 trillion. Yes, trillion:

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

The IMF estimates that closing this gap requires fourteen percent of GDP per year. For comparison, tax revenue hovers around fifteen percent of GDP each year.

I haven’t seen Kotlikoff’s calculation, so I won’t comment on it specifically, but what’s clear is our current level of spending is wholly unsustainable.

We must get control of our finances. Our future depends on it. Unfortunately, most people in Washington, D.C. couldn’t care less. They’d rather get reelected.

Eliminating Bush’s tax cuts won’t solve this, and neither will cutting discretionary spending here and there. This requires reforming our entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), discretionary spending (defense spending primarily), healthcare (real healthcare reform, aimed at reducing costs for individuals and families) and our tax system, and serious economic development.

This is a primary reason why I opposed Obama’s healthcare “reform.” It doesn’t tackle healthcare’s real problem, cost, and tacks on another $400 billion of entitlement spending over the next decade, along with half a trillion dollars of new taxes, all while we’re staring true disaster in the face. The cynicism of this all boils my blood. Democrats used legitimate fears of our budget-deficit and debt to pass this bill, claiming that it reduces the deficit, when in fact it makes an impossibly heavy burden even heavier.

There’s no doubt that both parties not only created this mess, and thus far have refused to address it. The only person in Washington, D.C., though, with a plan on the table for doing what’s necessary to secure our future is Paul Ryan, a Congressman from Wisconsin. He wants to do all of the things listed above, none of which are politically beneficial, and he’s staked his career on it. As far as I am concerned, he’s the only honest man we have in Washington willing to do his job: push for what the country needs, not what will push forward his career.