On Saturday Mitt Romney proved he is a serious man and will be a serious president. \u00a0He also demonstrated that he is a shrewd political strategist.<\/p>\n
In picking Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Romney bet both his election and his administration on a central task, reducing the national deficit and debt while restoring economic growth.<\/p>\n
We all know the debt story, but it is worth a moment of overall recall.<\/p>\n
With a GDP of $15 trillion, the U.S. in July carried $15.9 trillion in official debt and (as of trustees\u2019 April reports) unfunded liabilities of $38.6 trillion in Medicare and $8.6 trillion in Social Security.<\/p>\n
The real Medicare numbers may be higher. \u00a0The trustees (who include the president\u2019s Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner) have warned that the numbers include savings from Obamacare (rationing, deep cuts in pay to doctors) that are fantasies. \u00a0By some counts, when you take away these make believe savings, the Medicare debt doubles.<\/p>\n
But then again, thanks to the Supreme Court, the Medicare numbers may come down a little, too. Obamacare commandeered $700 billion in Medicare funds and sent it to the states to cover the new Medicaid costs that the 2,700-page law mandated. \u00a0In its Obamacare decision, the high court threw out the mandate. Rather than gut public safety and education, many if not all states are likely to opt out of the federal program, declining those crushingly expensive dollars.<\/p>\n
In any event, the total officially acknowledged U.S. debt is $63.1 trillion, more than four times the size of our economy.<\/p>\n
The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said these IOUs constitute our biggest national security threat.<\/p>\n
The unfunded Social Security liability means that the young people who told pollsters some years ago that they believed more in UFOs than that they would ever receive a dollar from the program were right.<\/p>\n
And the unfunded Medicare liability means that Medicare is on the way to becoming just like Medicaid \u2013 with doctors refusing to take the program\u2019s patients and official restrictions on coverage so extreme that researchers have found that there is no consistent difference in medical outcomes between those with Medicaid coverage and no coverage at all (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/9pn3rrv<\/a> ).<\/p>\n