Despite reforms included in the Republican budget proposal, entitlements will continue to swell under the budget plans of either the president or Congress.

• Spending on Social Security, which is nearly 20 times as large as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, is off the table by bipartisan consent.

• Federal health benefits will grow so rapidly that even the Republican budget proposal would let Medicare and Medicaid double as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2020.

• Under current law, federal entitlement outlays will climb from 10.9 percent of GDP in 1996 to 12.1 percent in 2002 and 14.6 percent in 2010.

• Then as the number of aged beneficiaries swells, entitlement spending will shoot up to 22.5 percent of GDP by 2030 -- 21.0 percent of GDP under the president's proposal, 20.3 percent under the vetoed Republican plan.

By the mid-2020s, entitlement spending alone would consume all federal revenues, and without borrowing nothing would be available for national defense.

Thus the federal government would still become a giant check-writing machine, transferring a rising share of middle-class worker income to middle-class retirees.