David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, along with Diane Lim Rogers, of the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Heritage  are campaigning to raise awareness about the major deficit challenges ahead:

Entitlement Programs - Healthcare: 
Medicaid and Medicare have continues to grow more expencsive and is expected to continue for at least the next 10-20 years. This will be further exacerbated by demographic pressures as baby boomers become eligilble for Social Security in 2008 and for Medicare in 2011.

Interest Payments
United States has accumulated significant debt over the last few years to foreign lenders - primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners. Current debt is $8.5-trillion and will grow by $2 trillion to $3 trillion a year.

Social Security is a much less serious problem.
The program currently pays for itself with a 12.4 percent payroll tax, and even produces a surplus that the government raids every year to pay other bills. However, Social Security will begin to run deficits in the near furture and “ultimately would need an infusion of $8 trillion if the government planned to keep its promises to every beneficiary.”

Solution:
“Calculations by Boston University economist Lawrence Kotlikoff indicate that closing those gaps - $8 trillion for Social Security, many times that for Medicare - and paying off the existing deficit would require either an immediate doubling of personal and corporate income taxes, a two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits, or some combination of the two.”

Source: Associated Press