Keeping America Great: Doing Your Part

This speech was given by the Comptroller General before the Gortner Lecture George Mason University, Department of Public and International Affairs, in Fairfax, VA, on October 2, 2007. America is number one in many things but not all things. As a result, while Americans have a right to be proud, we should never be arrogant. Unfortunately, the world has seen more than a little American arrogance of late, both domestically and internationally. That must change. After all, whether we're talking about safeguarding public health, protecting the environment, or combating international terrorism, the United States can't go it alone. We're going to have to partner for progress on these and other types of issues, which have no geopolitical boundaries. While America is a great nation, we face a range of large and growing sustainability challenges that too few policymakers are taking seriously. In so many areas--fiscal policy, foreign policy, health care, education, energy, the environment, immigration, our infrastructure, and Iraq-- we're on an unsustainable path. First, since America's most valuable asset is its people, I'll start with education. The United States now has the best higher education system in the world. Unfortunately, we're not even in the top 20 nations in math and science scores at the high-school level. This represents a huge problem in a knowledge-based economy. If our country expects to maintain its standard of living, we're going to have to stay competitive on measures like innovation, productivity, and product quality. Fixing our K-12 education system will require radical reform and concerted efforts by all levels of government and all sectors of our economy. We must move beyond rhetoric and start delivering real results for a broader spectrum of the American population. Second, our nation's fiscal outlook. While short-term federal deficits are coming down, we face large and growing longer-range deficits and debt burdens due primarily to the retirement of the baby boom generation and rising health care costs. The retirement of the boomers will begin in three months, and when boomers begin to retire en masse it will bring a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state.