If you make more than $250,000 you are perhaps fretting about how much the bailout and the fiscal stimulus will cost and how much you will pay for them. Tune out these dark thoughts. There is something much bigger to think about: the rising cost of government over the next 15 years. This should be on the minds not just of the upper class, who already pay half of the income tax, but of the vast middle class. If we define the larger group as those in families with incomes between $25,000 and $250,000, we're talking about three-fourths of the country. The government is destined to extract a pound of flesh from the middle class because this is where the money is; there simply aren't enough millionaires around to pay for everything. The pain will take the form of both taxation and broken promises.  Here's what sober budget analysts (from both parties) see when they focus on 2020 and beyond: The well-off will pay higher federal taxes, for sure. But ordinary folks will pay more, too. They will pay as tax burdens diffuse into the costs of things they buy. They will likely pay more for fuel and electricity, as the costs of carbon permits and renewable-fuels mandates get built in. They may be asked to pay a European-style value-added tax. And they will pay on the other side of the ledger: Their retirement benefits will get clipped.  The federal government will get bigger, but not big enough to keep all the promises Washington has made. So the normal age to receive Social Security retirement benefits, already rising in steps to 67 for those born in 1960 or later, will increase further, perhaps to 69. High earners will pay more in and get less back in retirement. Call it a "tax" or call it "means testing"it's government, and it will make you poorer.  Meanwhile, the need to contain Medicare costs and to cover the uninsured will also result in the better-off paying more, either through taxes, insurance premiums or both. "Whether we call it premiums or whether we call it taxes, it's going to be income related," says John Rother, executive vice president of policy and strategy for the AARP, the 40-million-member old folks' lobby.  You may be thinking: This is politically impossible! When Congress tried to raise Medicare premiums in 1989, didn't a gang of old people chase Congressman Dan Rostenkowski in Chicago? And force a repeal?  Look again at legislative history. In 2003 a House-Senate conference committee negotiating the expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs slipped in a provision mandating income-related Medicare premiums. In 2009, when those premiums are fully phased in, the wealthiest seniors will be charged $7,400 a year per couple for the same outpatient and doctor-visit coverage other seniors will get for just $2,310.  These changes aren't dependent on the results of the election or the final tab for the financial markets mess, although both will affect how this all plays out. Instead, the grim predictions are driven by the aging of the baby boomers, the relentless growth in health care costs and decisions politicians have madeor shirkedover decades.  During the last 50 years federal government revenues have averaged 18% of U.S. gross domestic product. But if the growth in health care costs isn't slowed, and Congress doesn't renege on its promises, by 2050 the federal government's costs for the Big Three entitlement programsMedicare, Medicaid and Social Securitywill exceed 18% of GDP, leaving nothing for defense, homeland security or anything else (including paying interest on the federal debt). Either taxes go up, or benefits get taken away, or both.  "What's unique at this point, relative to all the nation's history, is that the long-term budget is in permanent imbalance," says economist C. Eugene Steuerle, a Ford, Carter and Reagan Administration Treasury official who's now vice president of billionaire Peter G. Peterson's new antideficit foundation.  As of mid-October the federal debt stood at $10.5 trillion, with $6.2 trillion of that held by public investors here and abroad. (The rest is mostly the U.S. Treasury owing money to another federal agency or fund, like the Social Security Trust Fund.) Alarming, to be sure. But not compared with the estimated $41 trillion net present cost of unfunded Medicare and Social Security benefitsthat is, benefits in excess of the revenues that under present law will be available to pay them.  When will the politicians get serious about fixing this? Hard to say. The financial crisis might give them an excuse for further delay, making the necessary tax hikes and benefit cuts, when they do come, even more brutal. "It's like saving for retirement. The earlier you do it, the less you have to put away each year," says Clint Stretch, managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte Tax.  On the other hand, the government's new guarantees for trillions in private debt and a trillion-dollar federal deficit for fiscal 2009 could both hasten the day of reckoningif foreigners who have been buying up most new Treasury debt become concerned about the U.S. government's long-term fiscal prospects and put their money elsewhere.  The resulting federal debt crisis might force tough political choices that seem unthinkable today. "People will do on day two of a crisis things they'd never do on day one," observes Mark Weinberger, who was the Treasury's top tax official when the Bush tax cuts went through and is now global vice chair of tax at Ernst & Young. "Who would have thought a Republican Administration would nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?"
Prepare yourself: No matter what the politicians promise, long term, the government is going to grab more of your money.