Heritage Foundation-- Social Security is an "unsustainable entitlement"

[TexasLawyer]

Beware any right-wing efforts to balance the budget!


January 5, 2007
Bush's Call For Fiscal Restraint: Entitlement Control is the Key
by Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D.

<snip>

While the goal of balancing the budget in five years has a popular ring to it, the real threat to the economy and families is not the deficit but the relentless projected rise in future spending—driven by entitlements—and taxes rising as a percent of the national paycheck. Today’s deficit as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is not especially high by historical or international standards, nor is there convincing evidence that such deficits are economically harmful.

The real problem is the tsunami of retirement spending about to engulf us as the Baby Boomers begin to retire over the next few years. The cost of Medicare and Social Security will surge from about 7 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by 2020 and to 14 percent of the entire economy by 2050, when today’s college students retire.

That is why the President’s call for confronting these unsustainable entitlements is so important. He and Congress must begin to take action now, before the problem gets worse.

<snip>

The President should, in any case, press members of both parties to work with him to design a plan to reform and curb entitlements. He can also draw more attention to the entitlement problem by insisting on changes in the budget process to highlight unfunded obligations and to force Congress to reduce those obligations as part of the annual budget cycle.

<snip>


http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1298.cfm

[9119495]

1. Social Security--"Hey Heritage Foundation, you can just suck it!" n/t

[Deep13]

2. Me: vast, inherited wealth like that which Heritage Foundation members have...

...is an unsustainable entitlement.

[aquart]

3. Well, not if we end the inheritance of vast fortunes.

That should make it very secure, indeed.

[gratuitous]

4. Let's start by trimming some other entitlements

Like the subsidies to the oil companies, and the free pass given the extraction industries for their royalty payments over the last six years. I'll bet the Treasury gets all kinds of money if the financial beneficiaries of the Iraq war and six years of the Bush administration were asked to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.

By the way, Stuart Butler, how are your tax returns looking? Didn't overstate your deductions or understate your income in any way lately, did you?

[TexasLawyer]

29. yes, and I'd love to trim out

the cost of war in Iraq.

[Warren DeMontague]

5. No. Half a trillion a year to the Military/Industrial complex is an unsustainable entitlement.

$40 Billion a year (not including costs of incarceration) so that the DEA can bust pot smoking cancer grannies is an "unsustainable entitlement".

Feh.

[Delphinus]

6. OK -

then stop taking all that money out of my paycheck! I'll keep it.

[BOSSHOG]

7. heritage foundation credibility - clearly and totally unsustainable

a bunch of lunatic right wing morons who have no concept of anything but their own bottom line. I'm so fucking happy that the patriots at the heritage foundation are concerned with the relentless rise in spending.

"Curb entitlements?" right wing lunacy. Lets just kill everyone over the age of 65.

"Entitlement problem?" - fiction in the minds of right wing jerkoffs who care nought for our country.

[Greyhound]

8. Ah yes the Nazi Heritage Foundation...

Founded by a nazis (Coors) and leading employer of nazis, and nazi sympathizers, for over 40 years now. At least they are consistent.:grr:

[no_hypocrisy]

9. Hey, the Heritage Foundation can opt out and there will be more

for the rest of us.

[Selatius]

10. The Heritage Foundation also sold us the war in Iraq.

Come on, guys. Your credibility is shot to hell and back. We all know your just a corporate whore front.

[LSparkle]

11. Yes, and they also think they have a "Victory Plan for Iraq"

Unsustainable enthusiasm and delusion reigns over there ...

[porphyrian]

12. That pretty much proves it isn't. Those crackpots are completely full of shit. - n/t

[LSK]

13. WHAT BULLSHIT!!! Just raise the FICA tax limit

Just raise the FICA tax limit beyond 85k or whatever it is.

But but but we cant fucking tax rich people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Warpy]

17. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!!!!!

First, get the overpayments out of the greedy hands of Congress. Half our payroll taxes are being ROBBED. Increasing the revenues would only boost that to 50% or beyond.

Then, after Congress has been deprived of a way to fudge their books on the backs of the poorest, either remove the cap, raise it to a reasonable level, or institute a sliding scale that would sock the rich for what they've robbed over the last 26 years.

[LSK]

21. you can do both at the same time

But you are right, we need that "lockbox".

[kenny blankenship]

14. Ummm maybe the waging of war for no legally justified reason, at the whim of an unelected President

is the real "unsustainable entitlement" program? If one of these must end, then I vote for the end of klepto-petro Chimperalism.

[Warpy]

15. Try ending it, geniuses, and have your mother in law

move in with you. In fact, have both sets of parents move in. You can turn your formal dining room into one bedroom and the family room into the other. You'll get used to the crowding and balancing trays on your knees for holiday dinners.

Plus, expect the true cost of tax cuts to the billionaires to become painfully obvious when you no longer have 40% of every worker's retirement insurance premium robbed to pad the revenue stream.

Cripes, these people are so fucking stupid they never cease to amaze me.

[redqueen]

20. The people floating this BS aren't stupid... but those that listen are.

The greedy bastards at HF are just herding the idiots around to wherever they want them to go.

[Captain Hilts]

16. The Iraq War money would have sustained it. Ironic, eh? nt

[Hippo_Tron]

28. Yea, but that was needed so we could fight the A-rabs over there instead of here

Right wing morons never cease to amaze me.

[bpj1962]

18. Entitlement

Social Security is insurance. It is not an entitlement. WTF is this guy talking about. Can we help it if the baby boomer generation which by the way was the first generation to truly contribute to Social Security for their entire working life wishes to draw on it. If Bush hadn't spent the budget surplus on tax cuts for the rich or if he raised the cap from $95,000.00 to $135,000.00 we wouldn't be having this conversation. Even though I have other retirement plans in place I damn well expect to be able to collect Social Security when I retire in 20 years. I have contributed to the system since I was 16. That is not a sense of entitlement it is an expectation that a promise made to me is kept.

[Skidmore]

19. I'd like to see a few of the people with a huge sense of entitlement

to their wealth lose some of it. You know all these people who talk like this are comfortable.

[indepat]

22. Gee, it's a shame W didn't consider this before slashing tax revenues and starting perpetual wars of

a pre-emptive nature.

[blogslut]

23. Entitlement program

That term just chaps my ass. I bet the use of it to refer to SS and social services was Newt's idea.

[TexasLawyer]

24. We're "entitled" to our SS money

because we've been paying through the &%$ all these years.

[blogslut]

26. If I make it to 65

I had better have that damned money. Especially now that I am self employed. Only 19 years to go.

Entitlement grrrrrr.

[Hippo_Tron]

25. It would be perfectly sustainable if President Gore had been rightfully inaugurated

The Lockbox made a funny SNL skit but it's not all that funny anymore.

[MiniMe]

27. Entitlement??? We have all been paying into it for years

[WhiteTara]

30. social security is a trust...not entitlement

This isn't something that you get cause your daddy's rich and your momma's good looking. We paid into this fund our entire working lives. :grr: