Thread: Baby Boomers Will Crush Social Security, Medicare

Baby Boomers Will Crush Social Security, Medicare

Published November 14, 2010
FoxNews.com

Baby boomers withdrawing funds from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are going to "crush the system" in a matter of years, a member of President Obama's blue-ribbon commission on the debt warned Sunday.

David Cote, CEO of Honeywell and one of a handful of private-sector chiefs appointed to the 18-member fiscal reform commission issuing its final recommendations on Dec. 1, said he didn't realize -- even perched at the top of his field -- that the next decade will be disastrous to the nation's accounts ledger unless something drastic is done.

"It scares me that as a financially conversant CEO, I didn't know how bad this was going to get in the next 10 years," Cote said on ABC's "This Week." "The thing that everybody misses is it's my generation, the baby boomers, who are going to flow through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. It's going to crush the system."

"Social Security is going to go cash negative in five years. It's going to go broke in 2037," added Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., another member of the commission who appeared with Cote.

Medicare is "prepared to go permanently cash negative in just 10 years. So, obviously, those things have to be reformed; there have to be some changes," Conrad said.

The U.S. government currently borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends and is expected this fiscal year to draw a deficit more than $1.3 trillion. At the rate of current spending, interest on the debt alone will cost the U.S. $1 trillion by 2020.

Last week, the president's commission on the debt offered a 50-page set of draft recommendations that many viewed as a "good first step," but which outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said was dead on arrival.

"We're going to protect important equities, for sure. I mean, we shouldn't cut without sensitivity to the impact of those cuts, and certainly Social Security, which is something she's concerned about, is a great concern to us," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday.

But, Axelrod added, President Obama is interested to hear all the recommendations before commenting, and any decisions will require compromise from both sides.

"The truth is that as we move forward, if one side says we can't raise any taxes on anybody or any interest, and the other side says we can't cut anything, we're obviously not going to make progress on this. And our interest is in making progress on this," he said.

But even as Obama administration officials and commissioners talk a good game about avoiding a crisis before the U.S. economy goes belly up, already lawmakers are tipping their hands on the inevitable fight that will emerge in Washington.

"I think it's not wise to comment on any specific positions," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"We do have to reduce the deficit, (but it) should not fall disproportionately on the middle class," he added.

Describing any measures to simplify the income tax system to reduce debt "shock therapy," Conrad said he can't support one proposal by the commission that calls for eliminating tax deductions like mortgage interest and exclusions like earned income and child credits.

But he also said he doesn't support raising rates to raise revenue.

"Eliminate some of the loopholes that exist in the system. We have a tax system now that is just loaded -- chockablock full of preferences, loopholes. We're allowing $100 billion a year to be lost to offshore tax havens another $50 billion to abuse of tax shelters. That can't be allowed to continue," he said.

Sen.-elect Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he would support cuts in military spending though also could not back an increase in tax rates because it would mean larger government.

"We now consume at the federal level, 25 percent of the gross domestic product, historically it's been 20 percent," he said, adding that he wants to return that 5 percent to the private sector.

"Listen, some of this stuff is not Democrat or Republican," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said on CNN. "Some of it's just math. For example, 50 years ago, eight retirees for every worker, now only two. Look, folks at 25 or 30 years old today aren't going to get Social Security at 65 or 67."

Cote warned that whatever decisions need to be made, it's critical not to let "the demagogues and the polemicists" return to their neutral corners to scream rather than resolve problems.

"Democracy seems to be uniquely suited to putting a traffic light up after the fourth accident. Now, we can't wait for the fourth accident here," Cote said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11 ... -medicare/

"Listen, some of this stuff is not Democrat or Republican," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said on CNN. "Some of it's just math. For example, 50 years ago, eight retirees for every worker, now only two. Look, folks at 25 or 30 years old today aren't going to get Social Security at 65 or 67."

Does anyone else see the "math" problem with this statement? Is Warner an example of the absolute total FISCAL IDIOTS and MATH INCOMPETENTS we have running the US government?

Stop illegal immigration, pass the FairTax, protect our trade and everyone will get their SS and MediCare when they turn 65 plus people will have all their own money they worked for to pay their medical bills or buy health insurance and you won't need 75% of "MediCaid" or Food Stamps, HUD Low Income Housing, WIC, TANF, Free School Lunch or any of this other poverty-driven communist bull crap.

www.fairtax.org

They really seem to be dumping on the old folks. At least they've moved from "Bush did it" to "the Boomers did it." The Boomers have paid into social security all their working lives and need to recover at least what they've paid in. They paid the money with the understanding that they would receive a check from the government in their retirement years. The government makes liars of themselves once again.

Medicare is a pretty much useless program. With the 23% cut on Jan 1, the cut under Obamacare and another cut proposed by this panel, what's left? Again, Boomers have paid the tax and have been promised a benefit. Personally, instead of Medicare, I'd rather have a voucher and get my own insurance. With the state of Medicare, we will all need to buy gap insurance anyway. Better a good policy to begin with.

I agree Stop Dumping On The Baby Boomers . If our Government invested all the Boomers money instead of using it like a honey pot there would be a surplus not a coming deficit in SS.

Immigration and giving money to older Emigrants who have not paid into the system must be Stopped and the public medicaid funding of an enormous amount of Refugees,Illegals must be curb too.

We must take care of our own first.

Stop giving people that have never paid into the system full benefits. refugees from Africa that never put in one dime get more than my mother.
Stop giving the Medicare funds through Medicaid to illegal aliens.

Originally Posted by USPatriot

I agree Stop Dumping On The Baby Boomers . If our Government invested all the Boomers money instead of using it like a honey pot there would be a surplus not a coming deficit in SS.

Immigration and giving money to older Emigrants who have not paid into the system must be Stopped and the public medicaid funding of an enormous amount of Refugees,Illegals must be curb too.

We must take care of our own first.

You are so right. And here is something we can do about that:

I had the lucky opportunity of bringing some of this up to Rep. Paul Ryan, who was visiting during our state's gubernatorial campaign. Ryan (R-Wis) expects to be chair of the House Budget Committee and is specifically dealing with entitlement issues. We need to get a lot more active on this other wrinkle of the immigration issue....or we might wake up and find that instead of cutting this egregious fat out of entitlements, they have cut Social Security instead.

Ryan gave me the card of his chief-of-staff, Andy Speth, Please send your comments to:

speth@mail.house.gov

I have endured plenty of adversities in building up the Social Security that I do have: economic recessions, unemployment, hostile working environments. temporary employment situations. Please, enough! Let them go after other entitlements, such as the ones you mention, which are draining the federal dollars.

Originally Posted by Newmexican

Stop giving people that have never paid into the system full benefits. refugees from Africa that never put in one dime get more than my mother.
Stop giving the Medicare funds through Medicaid to illegal aliens.

I've been using a New York Times article to try to get this point home to our elected officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/31elder.html

When Congress starts wrestling with the entitlements issue, let's make sure they go after the right excesses...and leave the American people alone.

Revoke all those anchor babies citizenship, stop all their benefits, confiscate the illegal profits from the companies that hired their parents, then we would have plenty of money for retiring boomers.

.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/31elder.html

exerpt.

[quote]FREMONT, Calif. — They gather five days a week at a mall called the Hub, sitting on concrete planters and sipping thermoses of chai. These elderly immigrants from India are members of an all-male group called The 100 Years Living Club. They talk about crime in nearby Oakland, the cheapest flights to Delhi and how to deal with recalcitrant daughters-in-law.


Together, they fend off the well of loneliness and isolation that so often accompany the move to this country late in life from distant places, some culturally light years away.

“If I don’t come here, I have sealed lips, nobody to talk to,â€

"These people receive Social Security".....

In this case they are getting Supplemental Security Insurance. Still paid by US taxpayers but not coming out of the actual SS Trust, even though it is administered by the Social Security Administration. This article states that there will be 16 million foreign born retirees in the US by 2050. Many of them will be getting Social Security, which they have worked for, although perhaps not for forty five or fifty years like those raised in the US. But then there are the refugees and asylum seekers who can qualify for various federal and local benefits. This is just too much.