The fiscal gap threatens future public services. The fiscal gap-often called "a structural deficit" by budget watchers--means that normal revenue growth is not high enough to finance the normal growth of expenditures over the long term. A fiscal gap means that, in normal or average economic times, our governments cannot maintain all the services that Oklahomans rely on. Structural deficits are among the hardest public policy problems our leaders face, for several reasons:

• The effects are in the future and do not need to be addressed immediately;
• Much of the growth in expenditures is outside the control of the government;
• Controlling the expenditures would require reducing benefits to politically powerful and economically important groups; and
• There is little public support and even less public leadership for for reevaluating and restructuring our tax system, which may be necessary to solve the fiscal gap.

Oklahoma governments are not alone in facing structural deficits. The federal and most state governments are in similar circumstances. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) predicts that structural deficits will damage our economy and our standard of living and ultimately could compromise national security. They suggest that government leaders and the public must better understand reasons behind the structural deficits and what we can do about them.

• Causes of the Fiscal Gap
• Options for Closing the Fiscal Gap

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