Next year the issue of paying for the gov't will be back at the center of political debat -- Without higher taxes, the national debt will be crushing

David Broder writes in The Washington Post:

With every passing day, it is becoming clearer that next year the issue of paying for the government will be back at the center of political debate.

On Wednesday in Dallas, Ben Bernanke . . . said: "Inevitably, addressing the fiscal challenges posed by an aging population will require a willingness to make difficult choices. The arithmetic is, unfortunately, quite clear. To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above."

The next day, at a breakfast with reporters in Washington, Douglas Elmendorf, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, confirmed that his economists have begun studying how to write a value-added tax, a form of national sales tax, because of growing congressional interest in drafting such a measure.