Social Security and Medicare Will Bankrupt our Children

Congress has been arguing for years about the "best" way to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Analysts have been warning for even longer that the trend in entitlements for retirees will break the federal budget early in this century. Expanding Medicare to cover prescription drugs would clearly accelerate that trend.

It is becoming increasingly likely that Congress will ignore the analysts' warnings and pass a drug benefit bill this year. The AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is feeling smug about this huge expansion of their favorite program. Our children, on the other hand, would be quaking in their boots if they understood what we are doing to their future life in America.

For example, David Walker, the US Comptroller General, estimates that by 2030 Social Security and Medicare will consume more than three quarters of federal revenue. He further predicted that by 2040 federal revenues will be sufficient to "do nothing but mail checks to the elderly and their health care providers." The addition of prescription drug coverage will bring the day of reckoning even closer.

Clearly, as the budget crisis becomes obvious even to liberals in Congress, our representatives and senators will not consider letting the government go completely broke. At that point they will be faced with few choices: increase taxes to the point where workers will be virtual slaves of the government; abolish Social Security, Medicare and other "entitlement" programs; or drastically cut pension benefits and establish a limit to the nation's spending on health care, rationing the diminishing supply. They could go in any of those directions, depending on the relative political strength of workers and retirees at that time.

Living as slaves is not what most of us would choose for our children's future. Doing without a pension or medical care in our last years is not what most of us would choose for ourselves. The only responsible solution at that time will be to abolish the entitlements and wait for the free market to fill the gap. Unfortunately, while we are waiting for that to happen, many will live in poverty or die without medical treatment.

If the only tolerable future course will be to replace the entitlements with private programs, shouldn't we get started soon, while we still have time to ease the transition? We are wasting time aggravating the problem by adding more benefits to doomed programs. Instead, we should be talking about how we are going to replace those programs.

I'm old enough now that I'm getting membership solicitations from the AARP. I throw those in the trash along with credit card offers and other enticements to ruin my family's future. I wish everyone would do the same, and tell Congress that the AARP and others who promote irresponsible federal spending do not represent us.