Congressional Republicans and the Biden administration agree on one major portion of the federal budget: The major entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, are not up for debate.
The reason is almost entirely political, given that neither party wants to be the object of a profoundly cynical ad campaign portraying its incumbents as the ones who pushed grandma over a cliff. And so the major parties will pretend, out of fear for their political careers, that nothing's amiss in the entitlement sector.
Except they all know the numbers: Social Security is going bust. And according to a report from its Trustees, the point where Social Security will no longer be able to fully fund its promises is getting closer, faster:
The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033, one year earlier than reported last year. At that time, the fund's reserves will become depleted and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits.
The reason behind the change:
Since last year's reports, projected long-term finances of the OASI and the OASDI Trust Funds worsened due to the Trustees revising down the expected levels of gross domestic product (GDP) and labor productivity by about 3 percent over the projection window. The Trustees made this change as they reassessed their expectations for the economy in light of recent developments, including updated data on inflation and U.S. economic output.
In other words, the economy is changing. Workers are less productive, inflation is taking a bite and so on. What isn't said is that before the Social Security Trust Fund is depleted, the cost of servicing the federal debt will exceed all the money spent on every discretionary government program except defense.
Which means there will be less money to go around for everything government currently does. It's unsustainable, almost unthinkable and yet…because the political class refuses to treat spending, and entitlement reform seriously, the projections may be unavoidable.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Damn DC Estd Set doing this
Have you been to any SS office lately? English isn’t even spoken anymore. More and more immigrants are on SSI and Medicare than citizens are. Having never even paid in to the system and never will is a leech on those of us who PAID INTO IT. They also get more in SNAP, Section 8 housing, etc. than CITIZENS or our VETERANS. IF you want these programs to be solvent, kick these freeloaders off of it. Once the spigot runs dry, they’ll go somewhere else to suck another country dry at the expense of those citizens. I am fed up with this bullsh*t. Make it citizens only or do not take my taxes to pay for these leeches and then tell me there’s nothing left for me who paid all my working life into this Ponzie scheme.
I’m right there with you!! Thanks for a great post.
Very well put!
Barb, I soo agree with you. It seems as if the current strategy is to force the system to fail. And that is what scares me.
We working taxpayers were forced to take part in these programs and now due to their mismanagement they want to make it our problem. Stop spending billions on other countries, stop spending billions on illegals for a start and put that money back into the programs that serve the working taxpayer! IMO
I agree completely with all the comments above. Our economy is being driven in the ground by the democrat party leaders, who are destroying our country from within including the so called president whose son roams the world collecting bribes for his family in return for auctioning off pieces of our national security for money, and other inducements.
You cannot expect the Republicans to carry the entire load. If we do not agree with the Democrats on this item we will never win another election and the Democrat spending will continue to increase at the expense of the dollar by increased inflation. You must help us get the Democrats out of power so we can attack the problem. It will not happen until we register more Republicans than Democrats and stop the Democrats from stealing the elections. It may be an impossible task. We may be in the same state that Germany was in the 1920’s and 1930;s. The fascist Democrats running our government are winning. The last two years show just how bad it can get really fast.
Do these numbers included a payback of the $2 trillion that the Government “borrowed” from the fund. You know, OUR money that was supposed to fund SS for eternity?
The problem lies at the feet of the Democrats who for years have given jobs away to China and others thru Trade Agreements then Biden stopped the work Trump did to even out Trade to favor American corporations so they could move back and created millions of jobs – some even gave $500 hiring bonuses -remember that? America was growing again. THEN CAME BIDEN and the economy which should have grown after Covid began sinking again as he gave $$$ to foreign nations especially Ukraine and cut the Big Oil industry which was millions of jobs! It seems Democrats just don’t want Americans to prosper.