Topic: Tax and Budget Policy

Operation Human Shield

By
Michael F. Cannon

It is not offensive that Congress is planning to spend $70 billion to assist American soldiers in a hostile foreign nation. What’s offensive is that Congress is using those soldiers as human shields to protect $70 billion it is wasting on less defensible priorities.

The spending bill that the Senate is expected to vote on today has been designated “emergency” spending. In effect, that means it doesn’t count toward the spending caps that Congress supposedly imposes on itself.

It has become routine for Congress to meet those caps by packing the regular spending bills with junk and then to spend well beyond those caps by labeling predictable expenditures “emergency” needs. So every $1 billion of Iraq war spending they label as “emergency” allows them to spend another $1 billion on junk.

Talk about war profiteering.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Tax and Budget Policy

Sometimes, Governments Lie

By
Michael F. Cannon

Year after year, federal officials speak of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds as if they were real.  Yesterday, the government announced that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2040 and that the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2018 – projections that the media dutifully reported. 

But those dates are meaningless, because there are no assets for these “trust funds” to exhaust.  The Bush administration wrote in its FY2007 budget proposal:

These balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures—but only in a bookkeeping sense. These funds…are not assets…that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits…When trust fund holdings are redeemed to pay benefits, Treasury will have to finance the expenditure in the same way as any other Federal expenditure: out of current receipts, by borrowing from the public, or by reducing benefits or other expenditures. The existence of large trust fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, increase the Government’s ability to pay benefits.

This is similar to language in the Clinton administration’s FY2000 budget, which noted that the size of the trust fund “does not…have any impact on the Government’s ability to pay benefits” (emphasis added).

I offer the following proposition:

  • If the government knows that there are no assets in the Social Security and Medicare “trust funds,” and yet projects the interest earned on those non-assets and the date on which those non-assets will be exhausted, then the government is lying. 

If that’s the case, then these annual trustees reports constitute an institutionalized, ritualistic lie.  Also ritualistic is the media’s uncritical repetition of the lie.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care, Social Security, Tax and Budget Policy

Medicare’s Trustees Pull the Trigger

By
Michael F. Cannon

Fortunately, the trustees’ report (see below) does help lay the groundwork for future Medicare reform. One of the few helpful provisions of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act is what is known as “the trigger.” As Medicare’s trustees explain:

If in two consecutive [trustees] reports, it is determined that the difference between Medicare outlays and dedicated financing sources will reach 45 percent within the first 7 years, then a “Medicare funding warning” will be triggered… This finding would require the President to submit to Congress, within 15 days after the date of the next budget submission, proposed legislation to respond to the warning. Congress is then required to consider this legislation on an expedited basis. This new requirement will help call attention to Medicare’s impact on the Federal Budget.

As they did in 2004 and 2005, this year the trustees reported that the difference between dedicated funding and outlays will first exceed 45 percent of Medicare outlays in 2012. Since that is just six years off, the trustees pulled the trigger.

Since it is likely that the trustees will pull the trigger again next year as well, reformers need to start gearing up for that fight today. Here’s one place to start.

Topics: 
General, Health Care, Tax and Budget Policy

Hey Buddy, Can You Spare $86 Trillion?

By
Michael F. Cannon

That’s how much Congress would have to put in an interest-bearing account today to cover the gap between the Social Security and Medicare benefits it has promised, and its ability to actually keep those promises.

The trustees of the Medicare and Social Security programs released their annual reports at 3pm today.

A brief rundown:

  • The unfunded liability of the Social Security program grew by 20 percent (from $12.8 trillion to $15.3 trillion) while Congress dithered over reform proposals.
  • But the Social Security gap is still smaller than the unfunded liability of just the Medicare prescription drug program, which weighs in at a robust $16.2 trillion.
  • The total unfunded liability of Medicare topped $70 trillion (It’s actually $70.8 trillion. Round up or down to suit your taste.)
  • The trustees’ estimate of the unfunded liability of the Medicare drug program actually shrank 11 percent from their 2005 estimate of $18.2 trillion. But that reduction was more than offset by a 2 percent increase in the unfunded liability of the physician insurance part of Medicare (from $25.8 trillion to $26.2 trillion) and a 16 percent surge in the unfunded liability of the hospital part of Medicare (from $24.4 trillion to $28.4 trillion).

    • All told, Medicare’s problems are over four times the size of Social Security’s.

    Topics: 
    Health Care, Social Security, Tax and Budget Policy

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