TIME BOMB: Debt Ceiling Fight Ignores Dire Warnings In Recent Gov’t Report
The GAO has one job -- and we ignore their studies at our own peril
The real ‘elephant in the room’ isn’t the debt default we are facing this week. It’s a much scarier kind of default our own agencies are predicting in ten years.
The debt ceiling fight is getting a lot of attention. But the fact that we’re fighting at all means our leaders are missing the bigger picture.
Imagine going into an emergency room where the patient’s turning blue. Should they be worried about a sprained ankle, or getting the patient breathing again?
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The current fight has limited the national conversation to discretionary spending, regulations and taxation.
Democrats claim the federal government’s greatest problem is a shortage of money flowing in.
It’s not.
Federal revenue rises every year. If we could shrink government enough to ‘scrape by’ on 2018 spending levels, we would soon be paying down our debt.
What we’ve been doing is slow financial suicide. It’s the federal equivalent of making minimum payments on the credit card… while taking on more debt.
The real problem in our budget is found in the parts nobody can touch. The last time we took any serious interest in addressing non-discretionary spending, Dems ran scary ads about Paul Ryan wanting to push Granny’s wheelchair off a cliff.
In reality, according to the Government Accountability Office, Granny’s wheelchair faces far more danger from government inaction than it ever did from proposed changes to how we structured our Social Services.
For years, politicians on both sides have been ignoring serious warnings, kicking a plan down the road. But the longer we wait to face this problem, the more stark the austerity measures we will need to implement to get the plan back on secure footing.
Key phrases were emphaisized for the reader’s benefit.
What GAO Found
Since 2010, the fund that SSA uses to pay benefits to retirees has been paying out more money than it has been receiving in taxes. At the current rate, the fund’s trustees estimate that it will exhaust its reserves in 2033 and be unable to pay full scheduled benefits. The sooner actions are taken to address these financial challenges, the more gradually changes can be phased in and workers would have more time to adjust to any changes and factor them into their retirement plans. –GAO Report: “Social Security Series Part 1: The Dilemma”
One wonders whether this report even accounts for the massive influx represented by millions of foreign-born people who will eventually be drawing from this same reserve.
