Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it?

In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Michael Tanner, a nationally recognized expert on entitlements, health care reform, and social welfare policy, examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects. Many politicians on the left and right know entitlements are unsustainable but fear the consequences of reforming them. In contrast, Tanner offers effective reforms to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—changes that will improve our lives as well as prevent a fiscal meltdown.

Going for Broke will interest every American concerned about our shared future.

“Michael Tanner has made a significant contribution to helping Americans come to grips with our unsustainable fiscal path. In this well written book, he has made incomprehensible problems that are denominated in trillions understandable by describing root causes and offering solutions. Instead of demagoguery, he provides information—the kind of hard information and truth that America must finally face. You may not like the reality, but by reading this book, you will certainly admit we have a really big problem. You will have taken the necessary first step toward solving the problem.”
—Senator Ron Johnson


“Michael Tanner has produced a must-read book on America’s fiscal future: clear, compelling, and … terrifying. At the same time, he charts the path toward a real solution: a social safety net we can both be proud of and afford.”
—Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is the author of several books on healthcare and welfare, including Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution (2007), Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It (Second Edition, 2007), The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society (2003), and A New Deal for Social Security (1998).