WASHINGTON - Trustees for the government’s two biggest benefit programs warned Tuesday that Social Security and Medicare are facing “enormous challenges” with the threat to Medicare’s solvency far more severe.

The trustees, issuing a once-a-year analysis of the government’s two biggest benefit programs, said the resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041. The reserves in the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital benefits were projected to be wiped out by 2019.

Both those dates were the same as in last year’s report. But the trustees warned that financial pressures will begin much sooner when the programs begin paying out more in benefits each year than they collect in payroll taxes. For Medicare, that threshhold is projected to be reached this year and for Social Security it is projected to occur in 2017.

AP

Every year they warn us about this problem and as every year before this, the legislators will put their fingers in the ears, pretend not to hear it and hope it all goes away by magic.

The Bush proposal for creating private accounts in Social Security would have solved this problem in the long run because down the road less and less people would have needed to depend on it.  There is no end in sight for this money sucking leviathan if they don’t change the program entirely.  It is practically identical to when it was first implemented in 1935.  We have a program based on the data and demographics of 70 years ago trying in to work in today’s changed America.  It cant work and it won’t.  The Democrats won’t solve this issue because it takes away leverage at election time and the Republicans won’t because they are a bunch of spineless wimps.

As for Medicare, well, there’s your universal health care for ya.  The costs keep climbing every year just like the costs do in other nations that have all health care nationalized.  No surprise.  Medicare simply has to be scaled back and that’s the bottom line.  There is no way of making this program solvent without constantly raising taxes higher and higher on working Americans.  The best way to deal with this is to start scaling back on what the program will cover for future recipients.  You can’t do it immediately because elderly people who depend on it will have no way to supplement the out of pocket adjustment they would need to make, but if people know down the road know ahead of time that the same benefit won’t be there for them at their older age they have time to prepare.

Don’t expect anything I say to actually happen, however.  I imagine the “fix” to Social Security will be to raise the cap on contributions into the system, especially if a Democrat wins the White House this year, so everyone making over $89,000 can expect a fat payroll tax increase shortly down the road.  As for Medicare, God only knows.

BAGHDAD, March 24 — Followers of influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched a civil strike Monday to protest raids and mass arrests by Iraq’s security forces, underscoring the growing frustrations of Sadr’s group, which U.S. military officials say is playing a key role in keeping down violence in Iraq.

In some Baghdad neighborhoods, Sadrist leaders called on shopkeepers to shut their stores and for bus and taxi drivers to cease operations. Fadhil al-Bahadli, head of Sadr’s office in the al-Amil district in southwest Baghdad, said followers were planning demonstrations over the next three days.

“We want security and we want to release detainees,” said Qais al-Karbalaie, a spokesman for Sadr’s office in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyah enclave. “Our major reasons for this civil strike are the release of detainees and to stop random arrests.”

A cease-fire imposed by Sadr on his Mahdi Army militia is widely viewed as a major reason for the drop in violence across Iraq in recent months, along with a U.S. troop buildup and the rise of a Sunni movement that has turned against Islamist extremists. But in recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen and conducted large raids and arrests of Sadr followers in southern Iraqi towns such as Kut and Diwaniyah. Sadrist leaders in Baghdad said that they were still obeying the cease-fire and that the demonstrations would be peaceful.

Washington Post

Letting this man live in the name of trying to fight a politically correct war may very well go down as one of Bush’s greatest blunders. Although, some would consider that honor to belong exclusively to the war itself.