Tennesseefree.com

More signs our economy, our very survival engine, is stuttering.

WASHINGTON - Trustees for the government’s two biggest benefit programs warned that Social Security and Medicare are facing “enormous challenges,” with the threat to Medicare’s solvency far more severe.

The trustees, issuing their once-a-year analysis, said the resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041. The reserves in the Medicare trust fund, which pays hospital benefits, are projected to be wiped out by 2019.

Both those dates were the same as in last year’s report. But the trustees warned that financial pressures will begin much sooner when the programs begin paying out more in benefits each year than they collect in payroll taxes. For Medicare, that threshold is projected to be reached this year, and for Social Security, it could occur in 2017.

“The financial difficulties facing Social Security and Medicare pose enormous challenges,” the trustees said in their report. “The sooner these challenges are addressed, the more varied and less disruptive their solutions can be.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, one of the trustees, warned of a fiscal train wreck unless something is done.

“Without change, rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues and threaten America’s future prosperity,” Paulson said.

No kidding. Millions of seniors with no benefits? No health care? No social security? Taxes increasing on the young to pay for the old? Is this what we are looking forward to?

Guess: Why hasn’t President Bush come through with his ’social security reform’ program he promised? Do you need a clue? Does “Democrat Congress” ring a bell?

President Bush, who wanted to make overhauling Social Security a top priority in his second term, tapped Paulson to lead that effort. However, Paulson has been unable to forge a consensus with Democrats, who took control of Congress in 2006. He has complained that he is getting tired of playing “solitaire.”

Democrats contend that Bush lost valuable time after his 2004 re-election pushing a plan to allow younger workers to direct their payroll tax contributions into private accounts, an idea that went nowhere in Congress.

Reaction in Congress divided along party lines with Republicans saying the new report is an urgent call for action while Democrats accused Republicans of using the report as an excuse for making Draconian cuts in benefits.

Let’s see…draconian cuts in benefits in the short term to stabilize the program, or, allow the program to wither on the vine. Since most of these Congressmen are guaranteed a pension, and most don’t plan on being in office in 2019 (or 2041) well, there’s your answer. Lolly and make a lot of noise, for benefit of Party and re-election. And do nothing.

Politicians are incredibly short-sighted. Most look ahead only to the next (re) election cycle; Democrats especially have concerned themselves only with regaining power. Once they got into the House and Senate in 2006, they’ve done nothing. There’s absolutely nothing of substance or value to come out of the 2006 and 2007 congressional terms; they have infought and inbred and strutted and conducted BDS and meanwhile earned the lowest Congressional Approval ratings in history. Now, faced for the second year with this gloomy report, they hem and haw about ‘Draconian cuts’ and promise National Health Care when a Democratic President is elected.

Is there no one else who sees the idiocy in their presentation and pander show? More…

For the second year, the report contained a Medicare funding warning that will require the next president to submit, soon after he or she sends the budget to Congress next year, recommendations for dealing with a shortfall in Medicare taxes and projected benefits.

Bush submitted the first of these required responses in February. He recommended, among other things, that wealthier Medicare beneficiaries pay higher monthly premiums for prescription-drug coverage. Under the 2003 law that provided for drug benefits under Medicare, the president is required to submit cost-saving proposals to Congress if the trustees project Medicare will need to rely on general revenue for more than 45 percent of its funding in any future year.

Administration officials said Tuesday that Bush’s recommendations, along with proposals to slow Medicare’s growth included in the budget, would make a significant dent in the program’s shortfalls. However, Democrats have attacked the proposals, making the prospect for legislation this year unlikely.

Rep. Charles Rangel, House Ways and Means Committee chairman, said Congress “will do what we have to in order to restore long-term financial stability to these programs.”

How about some sensible cuts if needed, sharing the costs with ‘rich’ older seniors, and forget the ‘National Health Care’ carrot you are extending to stupid Democratic voters, to get one of your own elected? If anyone thinks we need more federalized programs, atop the failing programs this do-nothing Congress is ignoring for political expediency, then you deserve what you are about to get…a complete and utter economic meltdown.

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