The Economist says new rosy CBO budget predictions are a mirage.

there’s one prediction it is making with a high degree of confidence: Social Security and Medicare, America’s old-age programmes, will eat up an increasing share of federal spending and thus spell big trouble for the budget. The first “baby boomers” will be eligible for early retirement in 2008. The strain of caring for the swelling ranks of America’s aged will begin to tell then, and it will get steadily worse throughout the remainder of the forecast period, which ends in 2015. The CBO thinks that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, America’s health-care programme for the poor, will together account for more than half of federal spending by 2015.

Throw in interest on the national debt and government becomes nothing more than a giant redistribution machine.Maybe by then, politicians will not be able to claim the budget can be balanced by cutting out waste,fraud,and mismanagement.