“Medicare and Social Security Costs? Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

Read the following excerpts from a recent article in the WSJ. You should be concerned about what it is saying. And what is that? Well simply that your elected representatives from both parties do not have the guts to tell you the truth or to tackle the problems facing the two largest entitlement programs in the Country. (And down the road the growing liabilities of Obamacare are not far behind).

Not only do they ignore the facts, some of your representatives want to increase benefits before addressing current deficits and liabilities for these programs.

Politicians covet your vote more than doing the right thing and by voting for those who will not address the fiscal problems, you are voting for even bigger problems in the future.

Two words seem to be slipping from the Washington vernacular: entitlement reform.

There was a time, not long ago, when both parties were at least paying lip service to the idea that the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs—their long-term solvency in peril, their contributions to long-term deficits and debt daunting—needed to be adjusted before they either broke the bank or failed future retirees.

Now a combination of factors has blunted the reform drive. Declining short-term deficits, the salve of slower increases in health costs, the sheer failure of repeated attempts to find bipartisan common ground on changes, traditional Democratic reluctance and the growing dependence of Republicans on senior citizens’ votes all reduce Washington’s interest in tackling this toughest of problems🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻Yet the need isn’t going away; it simply has slipped out of sight for now 🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻Still, the non­par­ti­san Commit­tee for a Re­spon­si­ble Federal Bud­get says in its analy­sis of the new bud­get that it “does far too lit­tle” to slow long-term en­ti­tle­ment costs. The plan “does almost noth­ing to ad­dress So­cial Se­cu­rity and too lit­tle to slow healthcare cost growth, the driv­ers of rising long-term debt.”🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻Per­haps that wan­ing en­thu­siasm stems from the fact that the Re­pub­li­can Party is growing ever more de­pen­dent on older vot­ers, who are the most jit­tery about en­ti­tle­ment changes, even when as­sured they won’t be per­son­ally affected🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻In any case, both par­ties, which a few years ago seemed dri­ven by record bud­get deficits to the wa­ter’s edge on the sub­ject of Medicare and So­cial Se­cu­rity changes, now don’t seem par­tic­u­larly inclined to take a dive into those shark-in­fested waters🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻Mean­while, here’s the long-term pic­ture, as seen in the pro­jec­tions con­tained in a new analy­sis from the Con­gressional Bud­get Of­fice: So­cial Security will rise in cost by 77% dur­ing the next decade, and Medicare by 89%, un­der current policries🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻Mean­time, the fed­eral govern­ment’s bill for pay­ing inter­est on the ac­cu­mu­lat­ing na­tional debt will more than triple. Good luck get­ting any other domestic ini­tia­tives funded in that environment🔻🔻🔻

🔻🔻🔻The need for sus­tained discus­sion and tough de­ci­sions to re­duce the long-term cost of Medicare and So­cial Security is as real as ever, and the cost of avoid­ing it con­tin­ues to rise🔻🔻🔻

via Medicare and Social Security Costs? Out of Sight, Out of Mind – WSJ.