Medicare and Medicaid remain the nation’s largest fiscal challenge. If we needed any reminder of that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has weighed in (link is in PDF) with long-term estimates of the unfunded liabilities of these programs.

CBO estimates under reasonable assumptions that these programs will grow from the current 4% of GDP to 19% of GDP by the year 2082. This, along with maintaining existing Social Security benefits and financing will cause the size of the Federal government to double.