For those that dont want to read the entire thing:
A Qualitative Conclusion
For all the number crunching, either here or by the White House, it bears saying that such figuring is always slippery, especially five years out. But if the exercise cannot bear the precision people would like, there are at least three inescapable conclusions to draw from this work:
1) Unless Washington turns away from more than 60 years of precedent and engages in entitlements reform, the relentless demands of these programs, already more than 70% of the entire budget, will burden the economy increasingly and dominate the budget still more going forward, squeezing out other government priorities.
2) At one time, defense spending was large enough so that cuts there could offset the overall effect of the ever-growing entitlements expense. Because the Pentagon has fallen as a portion of the budget, savings there no longer offer the leverage on overall spending they once did, even if cuts were feasible, which, with the growth of global tensions, they are not.
3) With the inevitable rise in interest expense on top of these effects, Washington will lose almost all flexibility with the rest of the budget. The programs that the election campaigns will describe and promise will be a chimera, in particular the plans for infrastructure refurbishing and research and development that make a regular return to prominence with each election cycle.
