Academic

COULD THE U.S. become Argentina? UPDATE: The Washington Times is behind the curve ? Reader R.G?.

By Glenn Reynolds

COULD THE U.S. become Argentina?

UPDATE: The Washington Times is behind the curve — Reader R.G. McFadden notes that Dana Milbank was sounding the warning in the Post way back in 2005:

The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country’s most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina. . . .

“The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt,” Walker said. “The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina.”

“All true,” Sawhill, a budget official in the Clinton administration, concurred.

“To do nothing,” Butler added, “would lead to deficits of the scale we’ve never seen in this country or any major in industrialized country. We’ve seen them in Argentina. That’s a chilling thought, but it would mean that.” . . . The unity of the bespectacled presenters was impressive — and it made their conclusion all the more depressing. As Ron Haskins, a former Bush White House official and current Brookings scholar, said when introducing the thinkers: “If Heritage and Brookings agree on something, there must be something to it.”

Yet that is not how leaders of either party talk.

Congratulations to Milbank, and the Post for this early warning, but maybe they should be following up today?

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).