While Nancy Pelosi is excited that health care reform is only going to cost us $900 billion over ten years,  I wonder how we are going to get out of the current fiscal mess we’re in. Seriously. The GAO has a new report on how our long term financial situation is going to look like. A short sample:

“The federal budget deficit soared to a record $1.4 trillion in the fiscal year that ended in September, a chasm of red ink unequaled in the postwar era that threatens to complicate the most ambitious goals of the Obama administration, including plans for fresh spending to create jobs and spur economic recovery.

Still, the figure represents a significant improvement over the darkest deficit projections, which had been as much as $400 billion higher earlier this year, when the economy was wallowing in recession. Since then, the outlook has brightened and a government bailout has successfully stabilized the nation’s troubled financial sector. In a report released Friday, Treasury Department officials said the government had spent $132 billion less than expected in August, due primarily to a drop in anticipated spending on the banking bailout.”

You’ve got to love the “the glass is half-full” outlook of the GAO!

And yet, they do show that without social security and Medicare-Medicaid reforms things will get much much worse and fast.

Check out the charts in the report, they will stop you from having kids.

Earlier today Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty explained to BigGovernment.com readers how the Baucus health care plan is a prescription for higher taxes and higher premiums.

In keeping with the theme that good perspectives and ideas often come from the states, 33 state-based think tanks came together this morning to announce a health care reform alternative to ObamaCare.

“President Obama and other supporters of government-run health care like to proclaim that there’s no alternative to their plans,” said John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute. “Our patient-centered reform package offers a clear alternative that puts patients, not bureaucrats, first.  It protects the doctor-patient relationship, offers viable solutions for the uninsured, and keeps medical care affordable for all Americans.”

Patient-centered health care reform:

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