Charles Blahous, Mercatus
Among public policy issues, Social Security is especially beset by myths and urban legends. These myths inhibit the enactment of legislation necessary to close its substantial financing shortfall. Press, public and policy makers alike would do well to disabuse themselves of the following widely circulated canards.
Brian Riedl, New York Post
Charles Blahous, E21
The 2018 Social Security and Medicare
trustees’ reports have been released. For the first time in several years they contain some big (in addition to their usual bad) news: the combined Social Security trust funds and the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will begin drawing down their reserves this year, on their respective ways to eventual depletion. In the case of Medicare HI, that depletion is now projected to occur in just eight short years, by 2026. Read more here....
interview with Victor Davis Hanson via The John Batchelor Show
James C. Capretta | Real Clear Policy
Despite a strong economy, entitlement programs have large and growing financial deficits. Unfortunately, the gap between spending and revenue for these programs is likely even larger than the official projections show because of assumed but unrealistic cuts in medical care payment rates and the persistently low birth rates of recent years. As the bad news on entitlement spending and the fiscal outlook rolls in, the silence of the nation’s political leaders is deafening
Andrew G. Biggs | Forbes
The Social Security Trustees released their 2018 report on the financial status of the government’s largest program. For the most part, the report showed a holding pattern: no big changes, except that the passage of a year means that we’re one year closer to the Social Security trust funds’ insolvency.