Ex-GAO Head: Real US Debt Is Close To $65 trillion

Those pesky unfunded liabilities...

Via 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.[...]
He said Americans have “lost touch with reality” when it comes to spending.
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Nonpartisan GAO: Obama clearly broke law with Bergdahl-Taliban exchange...

Breaking the law, along with lying, is something Team Obama excels at...

Via FOX News:

A nonpartisan government watchdog agency said Thursday that the Pentagon broke the law when it swapped five Taliban leaders for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl earlier this year.
The Government Accountability Office, in a legal opinion issued at the request of congressional lawmakers, said the Defense Department violated the law by failing to notify key Capitol Hill committees at least 30 days in advance.
Further, the report said the Pentagon broke another law by using funds that were not technically available.
Defense Department press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby told Fox News Thursday night,  "the operation to retrieve Sgt. Bergdahl was lawfully conducted and that was also the judgment of the Justice Department. Nothing has changed about our view that this was a lawful recovery operation."
The GAO said the law in this case is "clear and unambiguous." The agency said that while the Defense Department defended the legality of the controversial swap, "in our view, DOD has dismissed the significance of the express language" in the law.

GAO warns nation’s current fiscal policy will lead to economic collapse...

The rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio is not sustainable...

Via Breitbart:

For two months, reporters and lawmakers have ignored a devastating report from the federal government itself, which warns that the nation’s current fiscal policy will lead to economic collapse.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO)—the personal auditor of President Obama and the federal government—released its assessmentof the federal government on January 17, 2013. The report’s findings illuminate just how dire America’s spending problem is and, therefore, how little the current cuts debated by Congress do to fix it.
The findings of the paper include these excerpts (emphasis added):

• “The projections in this Report indicate that current policy is not sustainable… Preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years is estimated to require some combination of spending reductions and revenue increases that amount to 2.7 percent of GDP over the period.”
• “It is estimated that running primary surpluses that average 1.0 percent of GDP over the next 75 years would result in the 2087 debt-to-GDP ratio equaling its level in fiscal year 2012, which compares with primary deficits that average 1.7 percent of GDP under current policies.”
• “It is noteworthy that preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years requires that primary surpluses be substantially positive on average. This is true because projected GDP growth is on average smaller than the projected government borrowing rate over the next 75 years.”

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