entitlement programs – The Health Care Blog

Are Entitlement Spending Cuts Bad for Young People?

Jul 1, 2018

By John Goodman

Almost everyone agrees that without significant entitlement program reform, there is little hope for a solution to the looming decade of out-of-control deficit spending. That said, there is little agreement on how to do so. The inclination on the right is to cut spending; the inclination on the left is to raise taxes.

Critics of proposals to reduce spending claim that younger workers will be short-changed. For example, when Paul Ryan proposed to reform Medicare by making the federal government’s contribution (“premium support”) grow less rapidly than the rate of medical inflation, critics charged that this would shift costs to future retirees.

What the critics missed: If future Medicare benefits are smaller, then the taxes and premiums needed to pay for Medicare will also be smaller. In other words, Medicare benefit cuts produce partly offsetting taxpayer gains. Take the cuts in Medicare spending already enacted as part of ObamaCare. According to a National Center for Policy Analysis report by our colleagues Courtney Collins and Andrew Rettenmaier, lower taxes and premiums will offset about one-fourth of the benefit cuts for today’s 65-year-olds. They will offset almost one-half of the benefit cuts for 45-year-olds.

Obama’s Broken Promises

Feb 9, 2012• 22

By John Goodman

I didn’t vote for Barack Obama. But like a lot of Americans, I was hopeful about his presidency.

Just as it took a Republican to thaw our relationship with China, it will probably take a Democrat to reform our entitlement programs. Again and again, Obama promised to step up to the challenge. Then he left the country at the altar and pursued partisan politics instead.

Bill Clinton was going to be the first Democratic president to tackle entitlement spending. Although the effort has been completely ignored by the establishment media, Clinton was planning historic reforms during his second term. These were to include private accounts under Social Security and vouchers for Medicare.

If that doesn’t knock your socks off, you haven’t been paying attention. When Republicans propose these things, Democrats invariably claim the GOP is trying to destroy the social safety net and leave the elderly to fend for themselves.

Clinton was serious. He had his Treasury Department draw up detailed plans. In fact, when Pat Moynihan, the colorful intellectual senator from New York, was appointed by President George W. Bush to co-chair the Social Security reform commission, the first thing he did was ask the Treasury to send him the Clinton-era planning documents so that the commission could continue where Clinton’s policy team left off.

So what derailed Bill Clinton’s ambitious reform agenda? Monica Lewinsky. Left wing Democrats in Congress threatened to throw him under the bus in the impeachment proceedings unless he completely dropped the reform ideas they regarded as heresy. Unfortunately for the country, he obliged.