National Debt

I want to address the problem we are leaving our children and our grandchildren. The problem I am referring to is the debt we are creating with social programs.

The country has a present future debt of 56 Trillion Dollars over the coming seventy-five years, that is the debt at today's rate. Everyday that we go without addressing this problem the debt only becomes worse. It is estimated that by the year 2016 that we will only be able to pay the interest that this debt is accumulating. I feel that this is unacceptable to do to our future generations.

The three programs that have accumulated this debt are 1, Medicare-2, Social Security-and 3, Prescription Drugs. These three programs account for the 56 Trillion dollar deficit that the country is facing over the next 75 years.

You are not going to hear about this from the three people running for election this year, the reason is, is that it is too controversial of a subject. They feel that it is better not to bring up a problem that will bankrupt the county, rather than tell the American People the truth so we can come up with a solution. They are more concerned with their power in the government rather that be the person that is willing to do the right thing and inform the people of what is coming. The politicians would rather line their own pockets and keep their little bit of power than tell you the truth.

What needs to be done is not going to be done because of exactly what was described above. We need to do one of two things in order to get ourselves out of this mess. Neither if the two items I am going to state are going to be popular to the elderly or the people who are getting ready to retire in the next 5 to 10 years. The two items I am referring to are either 1, eliminate the three programs all together. 2, lower the amount of coverage each program has allowed for each person. I will go into each further in the next paragraph

1, Elimination of the three programs. This idea is not going to even be approached by any politicians because the elderly and soon to be retired are the bulk of the voting public. The truth of the matter is, the first program- Social Security- was never intended to be a retirement account. Most people do not know that Social Security had a third word when it was first implemented. It used to be called Social Security Insurance. The program was brought into existence for the purpose to protect an elderly person from outliving the actuary tables. When Social Security was first introduced, you could not even apply for it until you were 65 years old. Here is the catch, the actuary table indicated that your life expectancy was 62 years. What social security was for, was to protect you if you lived too long. Like any Social Program, it has grown to the monster it has become.

2, Medicare. Medicare was brought about because as we progressed through the industrial age, we were seeing that most companies were stopping the policy of providing lifetime benefits for retirees. In addition to this, the government introduced the 401k qualified retirement plans which transferred the responsibility for retirement from the corporation to the individual. What they did not do, was educate the working class about investing for retirement. Even worse than that, they did not even inform the working man or woman that they were now responsible for their own retirement, not to mention health care. This lack of information and education is going to cause a flood of people who have not prepared for their elderly years. This is going to cause the Medicare industry to become unmanageable due to the bills that will be acquired. There is no way for our country to afford what is coming.

3, Prescription Drugs plan. This is a recent program that was brought about because of the elderly population as well as the Baby Boomers that are now hitting the retirement roles. Because these two sets of people are the majority of the voting constituency in the country, the politicians decided that they would pass this legislation for the sole purpose of obtaining their vote. The politicians that passed this law had no regard for the debt that this law would accumulate. They have no idea how to pay for this program, not to mention the other two already discussed.

The second choice is to instead of eliminating the programs, downsize them. What I mean by this is, let the programs continue but lower the amount of coverage each pays. This option is also going to be highly unpopular. People are going to say that they paid into the programs and they want their benefits. They are right, they did pay into the programs, but not for themselves. What most people do not know is, because the government has been taking the money that was collected for Social Security and using it to fund other social programs, that there is no money available for their retirement. What has been happening is that the money that was left in the fund was used to fund the people already on the Social Security roles. It is expected from the politicians that the next generation will pay for the Baby Boomers retirement. What was not taken into account was the Baby Boomer generation is the largest generation in the history of our country. The generation behind the Baby Boomers is about half in size of population, this means that for every Baby Boomer on the roles, it will require two or three working people at the present tax rate to pay for their Social Security. Since those numbers do not equal up, the next thing that will have to happen is the social security tax will have to double on those who are working to make up the deficit. Not a popular idea if you are in the one working. As far as Medicare and Prescription Drugs, these programs need to place limits on the coverage each recipients receives and force the families to help take up the slack. Once this is done, the government needs to transfer the funds collected to the private industry so that the money can be invested for the type of returns needed to fund these programs. I can see no other possible choice available to fix this problem.

I am not writing this to cause panic, but to inform and cause discussion on the subject.

As always, feel free to respond. Thanks. Earl