Mitch Daniels: That Entitlements Can is Getting Heavier, and We’re Running Out of Road

Mitch Daniels is the president of Purdue University, a former governor of Indiana, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, and a co-chair of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He recently wrote an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post. An excerpt of it appears below.

So another congressional session is half over and, we’re told, is likely to go by without a mention of the moose on the American table, our preposterously out-of-control federal debt. It’s not as though the stakes are high: just our standard of living, national security, all the discretionary activities of government, and literally our future as an autonomous, self-governing people. Every honest observer knows what will cause the coming crunch, so aptly termed by Erskine Bowles as “the most predictable crisis in history”: the runaway autopilot programs we call “entitlements.” Without changes there, no combination of other measures can come close to preventing the reckoning.

Read the full op-ed on The Washington Post's website.

"My Views" are works published by members or staff of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, but they do not necessarily reflect the views of all members of the Committee.