Excerpt: In the private sector, future obligations require reg­ular payments or are at least disclosed on a company's annual balance sheet. However, because the federal budget process excludes any measure of entitlement obligations and does not require that money be set aside to finance them, lawmakers continue to ignore the harsh fiscal reality that entitlements impose. In fact, under the current budget process, Mem­bers of Congress and the President have every incen­tive to increase[.]