Federal Benefit Programs Getting Heavier

WASHINGTON -- The government's three chief benefit programs are so huge and growing so fast that without raising taxes to historic highs, today's spending policies will probably be unsustainable in coming decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday.

In a look ahead at the next 50 years, Congress' nonpartisan fiscal analyst also concluded that the problem is so immense that economic growth alone will not be enough to solve it.

The three big programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- are all expected to undergo dramatic increases as the aging, 76-million strong baby boom generation begins gradually relying on them at the end of this decade. Expenditures are also being driven higher as health-care costs continue to balloon.

Social Security is so large -- and Medicare and Medicaid expanding so rapidly -- that limiting the growth of defense, education and other spending that Congress controls would not be enough for sound budget policy, the report said.

"Substantial reductions in the projected growth of spending or a sizable increase in taxes as a share of the economy -- or both -- will probably be necessary to provide a significant likelihood of fiscal stability in the coming decades," the budget office said in a report

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-long-range-deficits,0,6923125.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Spend into a hole, than slash away at everything besides "National Defense"

Sick.

Promote the general welfare, insure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity-

I don't think, no matter how many times I read that, it says promote the welfare of the few and to hell with the blessings of liberty outside of our generation. Bush needs to go back and read the Constitution a few times. He then needs it explained to him a few times. As far as that goes, throw all the repugs in there that believe you can survive with no taxes.

Sounds like more neoliberal propaganda.....

n/t

...that might help. Speaking of that, how many and which of the Dem candidates are for rolling back those tax cuts?