President Trump never claimed to be an actual fiscal conservative on the campaign trail. But his casual shrug-off of the nation’s debt problem doesn’t make the impending debt crisis any less terrifying.
The Daily Beast reports that when pressed by aides about tackling the national debt, Trump says the quiet part out loud, admitting that he’s just trying to kick the debt can down the road for a future president — which, in fairness, is exactly what his predecessors did to him.
Trump, a 72-year-old billionaire who’s never really cared about fiscal conservatism, can blow off the national debt, but it’s bound to blow up within decades if not sooner. If Republicans continue to fail to address it after multiple presidencies promising to tackle fiscal responsibility, they ought to stop pretending to be conservative. Someone needs to take charge on spending because the math is getting too frightening to ignore.
Our national debt is currently $21.8 trillion, which translates to roughly $66,325 per citizen, but more frighteningly, to $178,700 per taxpayer. While developed economies will almost always have debt, we are likely to default unless we engage in rampant inflation so long as spending continues to increase at the rate it is.
Entitlement programs — you know, the ones that Trump promised not to touch — are the main source of spending growth. They’ve become increasingly unfunded, not just because of government irresponsibility, but also because of a top-heavy population structure with an enormous generation of Baby Boomers now needing Social Security and Medicare, and an extremely thin generation of workers.
The first year a Social Security check was issued, more than 150 workers “funded” each retiree (every person who paid into the system in the present was supposed to receive equivalent funds in the future). In 2009, just three workers funded each beneficiary. In 12 years, every Social Security recipient will rely on only two workers. Two years after that, Social Security will become insolvent, and the deficit will explode.
Medicare is even worse shape, expected to go bankrupt by 2026. Naturally, we should expand it.
Taxation can’t keep up with this problem, and American standards of living won’t let it try. Payroll taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare will have nearly doubled from 2000 to the point of insolvency.
Our annual deficit will cross the $1 trillion threshold by 2020, with entitlements eating up over 13 percent of our GDP, a figure projected to grow to nearly 17 percent by 2048.
It’s not as though these programs are excessively generous, either. The liberal Brookings Institute notes that our current Medicare system is less generous than “80 to 90 percent” of other insurance plans, with a deductible quickly increasing to $1,000. Thanks to awful reimbursement rates, Medicare results in worse care for its patients than private alternatives. While Social Security recipients of the past gained multiple factors more in magic money than they paid into the system, recipients in 2033 will receive just 75 percent of what they paid.
Leftists love to hate defense spending, even though it equals a mere 30 percent of the cost of entitlements. But its projected and uncontrollable growth won’t destroy us all. Yes, we still have a billions of dollars in interest to pay off, but the first step to carving into the federal debt is hacking away at the most explosive aspects of our spending.
As much as Trump (and Democrats) don’t want to admit it, that involves entitlement reform.
