(CNSNews.com) - The future costs to maintain Social Security and Medicare will exceed available revenues by $41 trillion in the next 75 years, according to a government report, and those costs will likely require trillions of dollars in new taxes or spending cuts.

The June report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that the "unfunded liabilities" - or future planned costs for which funding has not been set aside by Congress - for Social Security alone in the next 75 years will exceed $7 trillion.

"One would need approximately $41 trillion invested today to deliver on the currently promised benefits not covered by earmarked revenues for the next 75 years," the report said.

Trillions of dollars will need to be raised, either through new taxes or in spending cuts.

"The $41 trillion is the gap between how much we promised and how much the current revenue sources can pay in the future," explained Michael Cannon, director of Health Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

No matter how you view it, the gap is huge:

-- $12 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Medicare Hospital Insurance, which covers inpatient hospital care, skilled nursing facility care, some home health care, and hospice care;

-- $13 trillion not covered by government revenues for Medicare Part B, which pays for doctors' services and other medical services not covered by hospital insurance;

-- $8 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Medicare Part D, which subsidizes prescription drugs that doctors prescribe for treatment, over the next 75 years.

"The federal government is on an imprudent and unsustainable long-term fiscal path," the report read.

Despite the fact that the report estimates 75 years in the future, the GAO emphasized the urgency of the present situation.

"Here in the first half of 2008, the long-term fiscal challenge is not in the distant future," the report reads. "In fact, the oldest members of the baby boom generation are now eligible for Social Security retirement benefits and will be eligible for Medicare benefits in less than three years."

Cannon said that the problem of the growing number of people eligible for Medicare is compounded by increases in the amount of services Medicare offers per person.

"We're going to have more old people in the program, and that's going to make the spending go up, but it's the rising costs of the services that we've agreed to provide through the Medicare program that is going to make Medicare grow from 4 percent of the GDP (gross domestic product) to 20 percent of the GDP by mid-century," he said.

The report notes the potential danger for exponentially increasing government debt if the social programs are not modified.

The GAO's models show that closing the fiscal gap would require spending cuts or tax increases of $54 trillion in present value terms, or 6.7 percent of the entire economy over the next 75 years.

"A government that in one generation does nothing more than pay interest on its debt and mail checks to retirees and some of their health providers is unacceptable," the report said.

The report proposes a "multi-pronged approach" to tackle health care, Social Security, and the tax system, in addition to increasing oversight of government programs and activities and updating the government's existing programs to address 21st century challenges.

Make media inquiries or request an interview about this article.

Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-Brief.

E-mail a comment or news tip to Keriann Hopkins

Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.