Morning Bell: The Age of Entitlements Must End
Conn Carroll /
The latest Democracy Corps poll, performed by Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Bob Shrum, shows that by a 64% – 29% margin, the American people believe that things in this country “have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track.” But nobody seems to have bothered to tell President Barack Obama who, on the second-to-last leg of a $4 million fundraising trip for Democrats, told a group of supporters in Columbus, Ohio: “Slowly but surely, we are moving in the right direction. We’re on the right track.” And that wasn’t the most completely divorced-from-reality statement that the President made yesterday. Responding to a question about Social Security, the President insisted: “So here’s the thing. Social Security is not in crisis.” Oh yes it is.
The debate about whether Social Security needs to be fixed is over. The 2010 Social Security Trustees Report, released on August 5, shows that the program will run cash-flow deficits in both 2010 and 2011 due to the effects of the recession. Then in 2015, Social Security will begin to inflict massive permanent annual deficits on American taxpayers. And Social Security is just one of the Big Three entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) that is set to bankrupt our country. Unless major reforms are made, spending on just these three programs alone will consume all federal government revenues by 2052. According to the International Monetary Fund, over the next 20 years the United States will experience the second highest projected increase of all the G20 countries in health care and pension spending as a share of GDP.
If we really want to get our nation back on track, one of our top priorities must be to end the age of entitlements. Under current law, Congress does not review and approve the level of funding for these programs annually or…ever. Rather, their expansion is on autopilot, fueled by demographic changes and rapidly rising health care costs. Unless major reforms are made, these entitlement programs will crowd out all of our other national priorities. The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America chapter on The Entitlement Crisis recommends: (more…)