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Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Social Security -- Hot Potato (which
is a Yank term for any issue that might require thought and foresight to resolve)
Josh Marshall provides guidance for Democrats on how to "frame" the upcoming debate on Social Security.
Because, as he points out,
"framing the issue is key."
But, no mention of the "projected future spending across all federal programs plus the amount of debt currently
held by the public exceeds projected future revenue by $43.4 trillion in present value, as of 2003. That
imbalance is over 11 times the $3.8 trillion debt held by the public that the government officially reports.
$35.5 trillion of this $43.4 trillion imbalance stems from Medicare (Parts A and B) alone while Social
Security accounts for another $7.2 trillion," which we pointed out on Friday from
the Testimony by Kent Smetters for the Subcommittee on the Constitution of The United States House of
Representatives.
That is "present value." This gives credit for the time-value of money -- meaning, the actual numbers must be enormous. JM points out that historically, Republicans have wanted to abolish Social Security. We agree with that summary, but we're hard pressed to find any Republicans that are standing up and taking credit for past Republicans who claimed that Social Security and Medicare were going to bankrupt the country.
As an aside, that $43.4 trillion is very close to the value we recently heard regarding total household wealth in the U.S. -- what was it? $44 trillion.
UPDATE: Don't miss the clash of Poor and Stupid with Paul Krugman's piece in The New York Times -- they'll give you a link to Krugman's remarks, so we won't have to put one here.
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