CongressDaily AM($) picked up a meeting of three former CBO directors who aren't very optimistic about the nation's fiscal health. Pessimistic about Congress' willingness to address looming fiscal shortfalls in federal healthcare and Social Security programs, three former CBO directors said Tuesday the outlook is bleak for heading off the problems. In a forum at the Urban Institute, former CBO directors Robert Reischauer, Rudolph Penner and Edward Gramlich largely agreed that the Democratic takeover of Congress provides dim prospects for resolving what they described collectively as an oncoming train wreck that might begin to derail the federal budget by the end of this decade. I got to go to this meeting, and CongressDaily certainly got its tone right, though I'd add that everyone was pretty optimistic that problems with Social Security funding, being relatively minor, could be solved if the political leadership was there. Most of the more intense gloom centered around health care. It's much harder to deal with health care costs because price escalation is being driven by factors that are harder to control. It's not just a matter of retinkering programs- that won't solve the problem. Health care programs will keep getting more expensive unless somebody does something such that costs are contained everywhere. It has to extend to the private sector as well, since most government programs rely on private providers. Health care costs are both a budget problem and a sectoral problem. A policy fix for escalating health care spending requires something that goes much deeper than is now being considering. To fix the budget mess, we have to fix health care.