As most of you know, I quote David Walker in every workshop and nearly every sales meeting I hold. In fact, David Walker occupies a very prominent role in the first chapter of my upcoming book, “The Virtues of the 0% Tax Bracket”. For that reason I was very excited to meet him yesterday as he presented in Waukesha as part of his “10 Million a Minute” tour. The title of his tour, of course, refers to the amount of money added to the national debt in our country every minute.
David Walker spent the first 15 minutes laying out the facts of our country’s fiscal condition. This was sobering at best. I had the opportunity to ask him what he thought the date was which, absent any action on the part of the federal government, would represent a “passed the point of no-return” moment in our country. His answer was very telling. He said that there are a number of not very painful fixes that could bring about permanent solutions to the fiscal problems our country faces. He then went on to say that if the country didn’t implement these changes in 2013, that the fixes would become increasingly more painful, to include massive reductions in entitlements and draconian levels of taxation. Again, every year that the government kicks the can down the road, the situation goes from fixable to increasingly more dire.
My big takeaway: if politicians can agree to enact the changes David Walker recommends, our country will survive and flourish. If politicians instead dig in their heels and cling to their stringent ideologies, the government will go over the fiscal cliff and America as we know it will be gone. So, if something doesn’t happen in 2013, then all the things I talk about in my workshops could, to some extent, come true. And it’s not a question of if, but when. More to follow.