With this week’s alarming report that Medicare and Social Security are scheduled to run out of funds by 2026 and 2034, respectively, the time for entitlement reform is … yesterday.
Without reform, millennials will have no safety net, thanks to Baby Boomers who refuse to take responsibility and instead blame millennials for all of society’s ills.
Where is the conservative outcry, especially among millennials, over these findings?
In addition to Medicare and Social Security running out within the next decade, if President Trump maintains his campaign pledge to not touch entitlements, which constitute over two-thirds of federal spending, the national debt – which is primarily driven by entitlements – will consist of 86 percent and 141 percent of GDP by 2026 and 2041, respectively.
If those projections materialize, there would be no funding for the military, infrastructure, or even the government, which includes services like the Post Office.
Such an occurrence would ironically make single-payer healthcare prohibitive, which is a bad idea anyway.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Tuesday, “The Administration’s economic agenda – tax cuts, regulatory reform, and improved trade agreements – will generate the long-term growth needed to help secure these programs and lead them to a more stable path.”
This is delusional.
While tax cuts and the aforementioned policies are crucial to economic growth, they can only do so much and instead play one part of the equation. The other part is controlling spending, including that which is non-discretionary. Leadership sometimes requires doing what may be unpopular, like reforming welfare programs (food stamp reform is only a fraction of the bigger entitlement issue).
Considering that Trump, unlike his predecessor, is not an ideologue and can be swayed on policy decisions – examples include sending more troops to Afghanistan and being open to the United States joining the Trans Pacific Partnership – the more effort exerted by conservatives, especially by those influential in the Trump sphere like Turning Point USA and the American Conservative Union, the more receptive the president may be to modest changes.
Modest changes would be better than doing nothing at all which will surely jeopardize the safety net of hardworking Americans, especially millennials.
Former President Dwight Eisenhower, who ironically preserved the New Deal which included Social Security, sagely stated, “How do you solve a problem? By making it bigger.”
The pressure on Trump must be internal and external.
Reportedly, Trump told a Republican congressman he is open to reform Medicare and Social Security “on the first day of [my] second term.”
Were Trump to be re-elected, his second term would not start until 2021. At that point, the United States would be just five years away from Medicare funding running out. Radical reform would be unpopular and betray a significant part of his base: the elderly and even some millennials. Piecemeal entitlement reform similar to what was accomplished in 1996 would be optimal.
Finally, Tuesday’s alarming news is a reminder that baby boomers, for all their complaints about millennials (some of which are legitimate), have not taken responsibility for putting the financial stability of future generations in jeopardy.
“The irony is that boomers criticize millennials for being snowflakes, for being too driven by feelings,” writer Bruce Gibney told Vox in April. “But the boomers are the first big feelings generation. They’re highly motivated by feelings and not persuaded by facts. And you can see this in their policies.”
It is time to make entitlement reform great again.
