Watch 60 Minutes tonight

America's top accountant calls the prescription drug benefit "probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s." Via Bull Dog Pundit on ABP:

"We can't afford to keep the promises we've already made, much less to be piling on top of them," he [Comptroller General David Walker] tells [Steve] Kroft. The problem is the baby boomers. The 78 million people born between 1946 and 1964 start becoming eligible for Social Security benefits next year. "They'll be eligible for Medicare just three years later and when those boomers start retiring en masse, then that will be a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state if we don't get serious," says Walker.

And, boy oh boy, this sounds familiar:

By the year 2040, Walker says, "If nothing changes, the federal government is not going to be able to do much more than pay interest on the mounting debt and some entitlement benefits. It won't have money left for anything else."

Which leads back to my standard rejoinder whenever advocates of Social Security reform are accused of trying to dismantle FDR's legacy: when the Boomer entitlement wave hits it will crowd out all government spending on things we call "the government." You know, like education and the military and food safety and national parks and highways. The "government" will be transformed into a massive money transfer way station, moving revenues from workers and into the hands of seniors and multinational banks.