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A letter from my Congressman on Medicare and SS!

trapdoor

Governor
Are we finally getting around to working on possible solutions after all the philosophy? I agree very much with what you wrote here. As I see it, the possible solutions are limited to something like the following:

1. Increase GNP, everything stays the same.
2. Increase GNP, make drastic changes

Right now, we are following the first option because there is no will to actually confront fiscal reality. On the left, we expect government to solve big problems and demand that the citizens participate fairly and according to their abilities. On the right, government is viewed as the enemy and no one is expected to modify their behavior but the poor.
Sorry, but that's not what I see. On the left, I see calls for additional government programs that will have to be funded by ever higher taxation, and no real call at all for addressing the debt or the deficit. You realize, if we were not so deeply in debt, we'd have no finanical difficulty. The interest on the debt alone is enough to put us in dire financial straits.

On the right, at least there is a general call for financial restraint, and not a continuous call for additional alms for the indigent.


What you would have as a result of this is a grasp of the options, the costs and the probability of success of whatever options you put through this model. Then, someone has to make the call. I am reminded of this whenever I think of Ike making the call to go on that day to Normandy. He did the best he could and then made the call.
To me, the sole option is the one that has yet to be put on the table. We have to cut programs. We cannot educate the children of every state, and feed the poor, and provide retirement plans for one and all AND conduct the esssential functions of government. We're a sinking ship, or at least one that's developing a list, and some cargo has to be thrown overboard. Perhaps those programs can be reconstituted if the financial picture improves, but we've got to ditch them for now, from the cheap ones like NPR to the expensive ones like the Department of Education.

I used to be poor and I drove old cars. They broke down a lot, and my resources were limited. When you have to make repairs, you fix the parts that keep the car on the road, and worry about the air conditioning later. That's our status now, we're going to need to do without the air conditioning for now.
 
The key issue you and others refuse to put on the table is taxing the nation for the government they demand. There is never going to be any political support for cutting SS benefits or reducing Medicare or eliminating Medicaid. It is not going to happen except at the margins. The federal government may attempt to push it down to the states in a 10th amendment argument but that only means folks in those situations will go state shopping and flock to the states with the more generous payments forcing them to tax themselves or eliminate massive safety net programs. The other way to do this is through massive tax hikes like they do all across the Nordic region and like we did prior to Reagan. Unless the GOP actually starts looking objectively at global solutions to say, medical care, we will never be able to learn from others how to provide better care at lower prices. No one on the right is even remotely interested in how NL, SZ or Taiwan solved this problem. Will anyone put on the table defense? The left tries, the right cries. How about incarcerations? Anyone can go to a tool and look at the elements of the budget and trim here or there but that alone will not close a huge gap. You have to grow the economy, tax the nation for what they demand and borrow the rest. Unless our economy grows exponentially, we are going to have to live with interest payments on incurred debt from Reagan Bush 1 and 2 and now the trillion Obama spent saving our economy from a depression.

Soverign debt is not the issue. Keeping the nation going about its business is the issue. And teaching everyone that if you want to get X, you have to tax yourself Y. That lesson was destroyed by Reagan and his idiotic Laffer Curve support. People still think we are always on the other side of the curve which gives them cover for spending more than they want to pay...
 
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