Posted on 07/22/2011 3:15:26 PM PDT by KantianBurke
With their vote this week to impose strict limits on future federal spending, House Republicans continued an argument not so much with Democrats as with demography. The real current they are seeking to reverse is not some ideological drive from President Obama to convert America into Sweden; it’s the inexorably rising cost of providing retirement security, especially health care, to an aging society.
The cut, cap, and balance bill that Republicans muscled through the House would authorize an increase in the federal debt ceiling only after Congress approved a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. The bill doesn’t specify the spending level at which Washington must balance the budget, but each of the major balanced-budget proposals that House Republicans have already introduced would eventually limit federal spending to an amount equal to 18 percent of the nation’s total economic output.
Federal spending hasn’t represented that small a share of the economy since 1966, when it stood at 17.8 percent. That’s an especially revealing comparison because 1966 was the year when Medicare went into effect—the first guarantee of health coverage for the nation’s seniors. The program didn’t even begin until July 1; Washington spent only about $100 million on it that first fiscal year. Medicaid, which provides care for both the poor and the elderly, was also just getting started; it cost the federal government only about $800 million in fiscal 1966.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
We need to dump those programs. They’re killing us.
The problem is any attempt to do so will get you thrown out of office. :(
Anything to keep dumping money into the EPA, NEA, HUD, etc etc etc.
The budgets of those departments are nothing more than rounding errors in terms of the Federal budget. Once again - the three big programs need to have their benefits reduced or taxes need to rise or a combo of the two. There’s no other way.
...each of the major balanced-budget proposals that House Republicans have already introduced would eventually limit federal spending to an amount equal to 18 percent of the nation's total economic output. Federal spending hasn't represented that small a share of the economy since 1966, when it stood at 17.8 percent. That's an especially revealing comparison because 1966 was the year when Medicare went into effect...Weird coincidence. Getting rid of Medicare would have the equivalent effect of Zero's Death Panels. Most of our health care spending takes place in our last years of life. But the main burden on all these systems are the millions of people drawing disability payments or eligible for health care programs because they are disabled and/or just not working. Thanks to the ADA, addiction (which includes the homeless, jobless street drunks) is a disease which means it's basically a protected activity.
I think we should just end the entitlements.
We’re not slaves now, unlike what OBONGO wants us to think.
dept of energy, education, commerce, NPR, PBS, Planned Parenthood, OSHA, TSA, legal aid, federal student loans etc etc
should be eliminated
It should be noted that that a significant part of the reason for the existence of this demographic imbalance is the very existences of theses programs, and their effect on our population.
I don’t simply mean the way someone tends to consume more when there is less(or no) consequences to conception. I’m talking about an offend overlooked failing. The failure to provide for your future by means of children.
You see in any kind of retirement no matter how you work out the math, your basically drawing upon the then existing resources being produced by the then existing population.
That means you have to store up resources, or credits for resources to redeem them later on. Children are not simply an investment in your family and genetic survival, historically they were a direct and practical investment in your future retirement. AS a result one of the main reasons people had large family was to provide them with an inflation proof future way to retire.
When Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid came on the seen naturally that incentive to have a family went away. Of course there are other factors that are contributing as much or more to the destruction of the American family. Abortion, Women in the work force, devaluation of marriage, ect..
The point is we can’t simply close our eyes and pretend that this problem is going to go away with more taxes. Theses programs are effecting our couture and choices in a negative direction that is progressively worsting our situation.
Insolently even if we wanted to tax more then 19% we couldn’t. So revenue is basically dead on arrival, not because we are unwilling to tax more, but because the Federal Government has historically been UNABLE to extract more.
Absolutely correct. Demographics were the flag that the Soviet Union was going to collapse, with Japan and Eastern Europe next, Western Europe soon, the U.S. a few years down the road, China a few years after that (although China will have a nasty depression this decade, possibly worse than the 1930s in the U.S.) and countries like Canada and Australia alive for another generation only because of large resource to population ratios.
In the U.S., we will need doctors, nurses, and nursing home/home health workers, and many will come from overseas because our universities/med schools cost too much. U.S. trained doctors need about $100,000 per year to retire a G.P. debt, over $130,000 per year to retire specialist training.
In any event, we needed the U.S. government to have been running a surplus of about $2 trillion per year over the last 12 years to (partially) fund these programs. Didn’t get that, so benefits will either begin late (raising the age for Medicare, cutting way back on Medicaid) or end early - death panels. The cold equations don’t care what politicians promise, what the people vote for, wishful thinking, self-deceit, any of that.
The best (only) way to mitigate this is to drastically cut regulations, so businesses can operate and expand in the U.S. and quickly let the U.S. be a surplus country again. But we have, at a minimum, 30 years of tough times ahead. This won’t be changed by 4 years of a conservative government, but a frugal government is necessary, lest we go the way of Zimbabwe. And some developed countries are likely to end up that way. Greece, for example, is at grave risk.
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