Government Begins Dipping Into Social Security Reserve; Social Security, Medicaid to Become Insolvent Faster Than Expected

A 50 year old bartab comes due.

Medicare's finances were downgraded in a new report from the program's trustees Tuesday, while the projection for Social Security's stayed the same as last year.

Medicare's hospital insurance fund will be depleted in 2026, said the trustees who oversee the benefit program in an annual report. That is three years earlier than projected last year.

This year, like last year, Social Security's trustees said the program's two trust funds would be depleted in 2034.

For the first time since 1982, Social Security has to dip into the trust fund to pay for the program this year.

Instapundit noted:

SUSTAINABILITY: In 16 years, Social Security will have to cut benefits by 21% if lawmakers do nothing to cure the program's long-term funding shortfall.

He also quotes a 63 year old, who realizes his Social Security payments may run out-- bankrupt -- before he dies.

This is partly Trump's fault, because he rejected any idea of reforming these systems to keep them solvent.

However, it is much more the media's fault. For 30 years, the media routinely published stories claiming the two parties' failure to address the looming crisis in entitlements proved the fundamental unseriousness of politicians.

They also routinely called for serious, courageous politicians to take the political risk of touching the third rail of American politics and putting forth a necessary, but politically dangerous, plan for reform.

Then something strange happened: In 2012, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did in fact take that risk and put forth a realistic plan for reforming the system.

But the plan had two related problems: First, the serious, courageous politicians putting forth this plan happened to be from the Wrong Party, the party which can never be right, and therefore the media attacked their plan rather than praise the plan as mostly what they themselves had been demanding for 30 years.

Second, the media's political party, the Democrat Party, indulged its fundamental recklessness and unseriousneess and demagogued the plan. The media completely reversed its 30 years of calling for reform to the system to demagoguge the plan right alongside its Democrat Party allies.

The media thus shifted the prospect of reforming entitlements from "politically dangerous" to "outright impossible."

The idea that anyone would push entitlement reform with the Democrat Media Complex demagoging any plan as pushing grandma off the cliff is now officially absurd.

So bow and take your applause, media. Your insane unprincipled partisanship has once again aided in bankrupting and destroying the country.

posted by Ace of Spades at 01:37 PM

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