Friday, March 26, 2010

Why wasn't this front-page news?

All the news outlets are reporting this, but always somewhere below Tiger Wood's return to golf and Jesse James' affair with a tattoo model:

This year, the Social Security trust fund will pay out more than it receives. The Congressional Budget Office did not expect it to pass that threshold for six more years. (The phrase "trust fund" is a misleading accounting device; it's really just a giant I.O.U., as the money has already been spent and it's a "pay-as-you-go" system.) Whatever you call it, they now expect that it will be depleted by 2037.

The Medicare "trust fund" is in even worse shape. It's trustees are reporting that it will be insolvent by 2017.

Both TARP and Obamacare were underwater the day they were signed into law.

Our leaders are smart people. They know that this entitlement spending is unsustainable. They know that bureaucracies don't change without a crisis. Are they deliberately creating a crisis? What's the change they want?


1 comment:

Mungo said...

It was front page on DrudgeReport.com, but I know that doesn't matter... :-)