Walker Walks: Is Anyone Paying Attention?

America's auditor-in-chief is looking for a bigger bullhorn. One week ago David M. Walker resigned as Comptroller General of the U.S. and head of the General Accountability Office. The GAO is a Congressional watchdog agency tasked with making federal programs "more efficient, effective, ethical and equitable" (www.gao.gov).

Walker is relinquishing a position that he has held for ten years, during which time he has pleaded with Congress to address a looming fiscal crisis born of unsustainable entitlement spending. With Congress paying scant attention, Walker in 2007 took his message directly to the nation in a "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour." Demographic trends, he warns, will bring about a huge increase in the costs of Medicare and Social Security in the decades ahead. Benefits will need to be trimmed and revenues enhanced to keep those programs solvent.

Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, agrees. "Whether you are liberal, conservative, middle of the road, Democrat, Republican, Independent, the numbers don't add up," says Bixby. "It's a matter of arithmetic, not ideology."

Screw-ups in the here and now have not escaped Walker's attention, either, as he has criticized Congress for pork-barrel spending and support of a "dysfunctional" government in Iraq. Still, entitlement shortfalls remain the major cause of concern, and they will get worse if Democrats succeed in mandating universal health care. With five years left before the end of his term, Walker decided he couldn't wait. He will head up the newly formed Peter G. Peterson Foundation to try to light a fire under Congress.

"As Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO, there are real limitations on what I can do and say in connection with key public policy issues, especially issues that directly relate to GAO's client--the Congress," Walker said in his resignation statement. "My new position will provide me with the ability and resources to more aggressively address a range of current and emerging challenges facing our country."

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