Last fall Paul O'Neill, then Secretary of the Treasury, wanted a simple answer to a thorny question: How prepared was the nation today to pay all its future bills? Two government experts worked for months to calculate the answer. Their findings, which shocked even them, were never published?the Bush administration made sure of that. The reason for the silence was that by the time the two researchers had completed their study, O'Neill had been thrown out of the Treasury and replaced by the more politically astute John Snow. No savvy administration power player would dare point out, right in the middle of tax-cut season, that there was a huge hole in the country's finances?a $44 trillion hole.
That's the kind of Washington tactic that makes Larry Kotlikoff angry. So angry, in fact, that the normally composed and carefully spoken academic starts ranting about a government conspiracy to keep us all in the dark. He even refers to this particular episode as "the great Treasury cover-up." And once you start Kotlikoff on the subject, it's hard to stop him. "I hate politicians," he says, without pausing for breath. "These people are so...
I'm a member of that "for our grandchildren" group :Q I don't like alot they stand for but I also think their work to make the problem known is good.
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