David M. Walker, head of the GAO, spoke this weekend in Austin at The Driskill Hotel warning of impending financial crisis in the United States.

Let’s take a cue from the chief accountant for the United States, the comptroller in the General Accounting Office (GAO). Here is an excerpt from an AP story about his talk:

From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season, America’s political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier for the American people.

What they don’t talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.

There’s a good reason politicians don’t like to talk about the nation’s long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them.

“Deficits don’t matter.” –Dick Cheney (or do they?)