A new CBO report. It's the entitlements that will sink this country, and every attempt made to fix it will be treated as an attack on the elderly and the poor. After all, most current Senators will be living on their own cushy retirement programs by the time the shit hits the fan.

-- Driven by rising health care costs and an aging population, spending on entitlement programs--especially Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--will claim a sharply increasing share of the nation's economic output over the coming decades.

-- Unless taxation reaches levels that are unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies will probably be financially unsustainable over the next 50 years. An ever-growing burden of federal debt held by the public would have a corrosive and potentially contractionary effect on the economy.

-- As the U.S. tax system is currently configured, revenues will increase as a share of gross domestic product. Under current law, taxpayers will face higher rates, with detrimental consequences for work, saving, and economic growth.

-- Fiscal policy could be financially sustainable if the growth of health care costs slowed significantly from historical rates. But even in those circumstances, tax revenues would probably need to be higher than they have been in the past.

-- If taxation is restricted to the levels that prevailed in the past, the growth of entitlement spending will have to be substantially reduced. Restricting the growth of outlays for defense, education, transportation, and other discretionary programs would not be enough to ensure fiscal sustainability.

-- Likewise, economic growth alone is unlikely to bring the nation's long-term fiscal position into balance. Moreover, issuing ever-larger amounts of debt or dramatically raising tax rates could significantly reduce growth.

Socialism doesn't work, and it seems every nation has to find this out the hard way.