The Economy | Where have we heard this warning before?

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, January, 2007 | by Andrew Cassel

You are forgiven if you tuned into the Federal Reserve Board chairman's Senate testimony yesterday and thought you were watching a rerun. Yes, the guy at the table this time wore a beard and spoke somewhat less elliptically than his predecessor. But the substance of Ben S. Bernanke's message to a Senate panel was basically the same one that Alan Greenspan delivered repeatedly for years from that same catbird seat: The federal budget is cruising toward a waterfall - actually two waterfalls, a small one and a big one.

The small one is called Social Security; the big one is called health care. And if we don't change course soon, we risk a political and economic dunking. Currently, "we are experiencing what seems likely to be the calm before the storm," Bernanke said of the...