The White House's Office of Management and Budget is keeping secret the detailed and long-term budget projections and parameters that it uses to forecast the deficit in future years.

For Congress to ignore outright the rapid growth in future pension and healthcare obligations in its budget seems indefensible.

Current government accounting practices fail to grasp the future economic consequences of Social Security and Medicare.

Few realize how bad the federal government's finances are, because most evaluations are based on what happened in the past--not what is likely to happen in the future.

Congress should revisit the Medicare prescription drug program and insist on significant market-based reforms, not merely an ever-expanding array of benefits.

Reforms that go beyond prescription drugs are needed if the program is to survive the financial pressures created by the baby boomers, who will double Medicare enrollment by 2030.

The new prescription drug benefit will be a fiscally irresponsible subsidy with astronomical long-term costs.

At this AEI conference, AEI resident scholar Andrew G. Biggs will discuss research on Social Security's incentives to delay retirement, while Estelle James, a pension consultant and former World Bank economist, will present findings on how Chile's 1980 pension reform affected labor force participation by seniors.