Federal spending mandated by our major entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) today comprises the majority of the federal budget and will bankrupt the United States absent imminent structural reforms.
Not only do these entitlement programs drain federal spending dollars, but they don’t do a particularly good job of delivering promised services and benefits. Social Security provides a shameful rate of return for most recipients, especially when compared with private sector alternatives. And seniors and the poor are finding it increasingly difficult to find a doctor who will accept Medicare or Medicaid patients.
IPI has proposed specific, concrete solutions that would not only make these programs solvent and sustainable, but also deliver superior benefits. Entitlements should not be reformed solely for the benefit of the federal government, but also for the benefit of taxpayers and recipients.
How ObamaCare Guts Medicare
Everyone should know by now that Medicare suffers dramatic long-term deficits and unfunded liabilities, and is in need of fundamental, structural reforms. But effectively refusing to pay the doctors and hospitals that provide the medical care the program promises to seniors is no way to solve that problem.
A New Vision for Entitlements
Simply trying to cut promised entitlement benefits is not a promising reform strategy. The solution lies in fundamental structural reforms to create new safety net programs that would be far more effective in achieving social goals, with only a fraction of the spending of current programs. This is the key to making entitlement reforms politically feasible.
How Bush Lost Personal Accounts
Bush advanced personal accounts for Social Security during his 2000 campaign, focusing solely on the personal accounts and their benefits for working people, and contrasting them with the alternatives of tax increases and benefit cuts. But once elected, he allowed this reform model to be displaced by tax increases and benefit cuts as the core of reform, with personal accounts as the “dessert.” This left the reform without the grassroots appeal to overcome the opposition on such a politically sensitive issue as Social Security.
Welfare and the "Road to Serfdom"
Designed to recover welfare costs from parents who abandon their children, child support has expanded to include middle-class divorced families for which it was never intended. Through this abuse of power, taxpayers subsidize both fatherlessness and state government operations.
Stop the Raid, Start the Accounts
The total Social Security trust fund surplus would immediately fund 3.2 percent personal retirement accounts, stopping the spending raid on the trust fund and starting the personal accounts so broadly supported by the public. This would begin to solve Social Security’s unfunded liability problem while leaving the door open to a future extension of the accounts or other steps necessary for a comprehensive solution.
Sen. Graham Turns His Back on the Conservative Cause
Sen. Graham is either unfamiliar with or willingly ignorant of this important work done by the Social Security Administration. He should spend a few hours studying it, or spend his time working on something else.
Social Security: Here's Your Problem
Social Security has two major problems that necessitate fundamental reform now. The program will fall far short of funds to pay promised benefits to today's middle-aged and younger workers, according to Social Security's own trustees. Additionally, workers get a very low return on the money they pay into the system. Saving and investing the money in personal accounts would yield much higher returns. Such accounts would solve the long-term bankruptcy problem as well.
Social Security Reform and National Spending Restraint
The most desirable method of financing the transition to personal retirement accounts is to modestly reduce the growth rate of federal spending. Raising taxes would harm the economy. And future benefit cuts are wholly unnecessary, not only because they would do nothing to bridge the short-term financing gap, but also because the eventual proceeds from large personal accounts would more than offset any savings gained from cuts in promised benefits.
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