Sometimes it’s good for governments to operate by rules that don’t apply to the rest of us (see the Bill of Rights). At other times, a different set of rules is to our peril.
Take, for example, the financial state of the federal government (which is to say, all of us). The federal debt is not the widely reported $16 trillion–already larger than the national economy–but something even worse. It’s $87 trillion, or5.5 times the entire economy.
Why haven’t we heard this before? As former congressmen Chris Cox and Bill Archer explain, the numbers are out there, but they’re segmented into various reports. We don’t have a single report that accurately describes the federal balance sheet.
They conclude, “Were American policy makers to have the benefit of transparent financial statements prepared the way public companies must report their pension liabilities, they would see clearly the magnitude of the future borrowing that these liabilities imply” (emphasis added).
Would being able to see clearly lead to smarter decisions? I would hope so, but then again, short-term thinking tends to dominate over long-term thinking, especially in politics.
From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=5877#ixzz2HgibTdF1