The Financial Times reports that the Financial Accounting Standards Board is about to recommend that the federal government adopt "accrual" accoounting to more accurately affect its budget situation. This would mean, for example, that the projected cost of Medicare benefits for a worker who is 25 today should be listed as a government obligation.
While the pretense is that this accounting method would be more honest, I can think of 20 ways to game this off the top of my head (e.g. write in cuts for 40 years out that you know will not happen, stop making projections for certain programs -- we don't make projections for prison costs now). It looks to me like another backhanded way to build support for cutting Social Security and Medicare by people who refuse to address the real source of the problem -- the projected explosion in U.S. health care costs.
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