The Entitlement Tsunami
The San Antonio Express-News editorializes today on the coming disaster that politicians from both parties are studiously ignoring. The trainwreck of Social Security and Medicare will begin as early as 2013 according to a new report. Yet Hillary Clinton dodged the issue at a recent AARP meeting. That isn't going to work.
Speaking at an AARP forum for presidential candidates last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton laid out her vision for entitlement programs headed toward insolvency.
"Raising the retirement age is not the answer," she said. "Cutting benefits is not an answer."
Presumably raising taxes is not an alternative either because, she said, "Putting everything on the table is not the right answer." Which sounds like a prescription for more of what Washington is already doing to address this problem — nothing.
Clinton's appearance at the AARP event coincided with the release of yet another one of those reports detailing the dire financial situation of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. This one, from the Treasury Department, says Social Security has a $13.6 trillion shortfall.
Delaying changes — that is, keeping difficult decisions off the table — only makes the situation worse.
The HillaryCare plan will bring socialized medicine - and another huge funding burden to taxpayers. Yet neither she nor many other politicians are addressing the simple fact that the treasury is in trouble over already existing entitlements. Wouldn't it be a better idea to address that issue before instituting another enormously expensive program? The editorial suggests adopting a plan from Senator John Cornyn of Texas to set up bi-partisan commissions to make the hard calls on how to solve the looming crisis. That idea, taking the politics out of the situation, is not gaining much traction with folks like Hillary. Dodging this issue and trying to institute expensive new programs is not the answer.
By syn, Monday, 8 October , 2007 @ 10:19 am
Nobody ever mentioned to the Great Society that the New Deal took the easy way out of solving difficult problems:
Want to end poverty, just abort poor people.
Want to save Social Security and Medicare, just pull the plug of eldery people.
If anyone over the age of 40 believe that the ‘younger generation’ is going to give up the next fourty years of good times by paying 75% of their income to financially support those who partied in good times for the last fourty years of their lives, will soon find out oh my how times have changed.
Or, maybe this is Karma’s way of teaching the lesson that utopia is unattainable in the real world.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Monday, 8 October , 2007 @ 6:19 pm
Waddaya mean “doing nothing”? The MSM and their Democrat pets will do what they have done since the start of the New Deal - blame the GOP.