Sunday, May 19, 2013

"Entitlements" - Another Republican-Manufactured "Crisis"

The Entitlement Crisis That Isn’t
Social Security won't contribute to future budget deficits. By law, it can only spend money from the Social Security trust fund.
Social Security Is Not the Problem
The figure below, from CBO, show that as a share of GDP, neither Social Security nor other spending (which includes the discretionary spending that everyone’s all gung ho to slash away at) are driving government spending as a share of the economy. It’s health care. And as I’ve stressed every time this comes up, that’s not a gov’t problem—that’s just a problem. In fact, health costs grow faster in the private than in the public sector.
Washington thinks entitlements are the problem. Maybe they’re the answer.
There is No Entitlement Crisis
That the United States faces daunting long-term budget challenges is indisputable. But the very projections—those of the Congressional Budget Office—cited to document the long-term budget challenge, show that there is no general entitlement problem. Rather, the nation faces a daunting health care financing problem that bedevils private insurers and public programs alike.

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