David Wessel reports on the economy.

Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave a speech the other day at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. In it, he nicely summarized the federal government’s long-term fiscal problem in one sentence:

“The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services,” he said.

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