GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker urges action on mounting U.S. fiscal shortfall in Missoula lecture

Comptroller General David M. Walker, head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), told an audience at the University of Montana in Missoula that the nation faces a long-term fiscal threat from rising entitlement costs, demographic change and growing public debt and urged early policy action to avoid a serious fiscal crisis.

Walker framed the problem as a set of solvable policy failures: long-range deficits and “unfunded commitments” for Social Security and Medicare, health-care cost growth, and weak budget controls. He said the retirement of the baby-boom generation and escalating health-care costs are the main drivers of the problem and repeated his central claim that “our government has made a whole lot of promises that in the long run, it cannot possibly keep.”

Why it matters: Walker warned the costs will compound and that delaying reforms will increase the burden on younger generations. He cited a GAO-style view of the nation’s fiscal outlook — long-range liabilities measured in tens of trillions of…