>>SS, Medicare & Medicaid obligations > $200 Trillion.
Depends whether you believe the ss fund is real. ;-) If it's real then there's enough $ for ss payments until at least 2037. Healthcare is the one that will hurt.
Here's an interesting article about the deficit:
A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers.
First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels.
Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run.
Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html?_r=1
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
