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On May 6th, the 2024 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund was released. It’s a very long title for a report that simply tells us the financial state of Medicare and project the future financial solvency of the program. One claim of the report is Medicare solvency has been extended 5 more years than the 2023 projection, and won’t go broke until 2036. But as with all things involving the Biden Administration, that isn’t the entire story.The 261-page report should be a purely factual...

This is a conversation that comes up in Washinton every few years before it fades away without anything being done about it. The clock is ticking for the Social Security system. It's still solvent for the moment, but at the current rate of retirement for senior citizens and the shrinking number of young people entering the workforce, the program will begin running short of cash in roughly nine years. (Possibly a bit longer if the economy strengthens.) The math is fairly straightforward and it obviously needs to be fixed, but thus far, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports, a politically palatable...

Below is my column in the New York Post on the suggested censorship of bank critics by Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.). It was only the latest example of how censorship has become a reflexive response of many Democrats to opposing views. It is now increasingly common for certain views to be declared as simply too dangerous to be tolerated or allowed on social media, including (it seems) questioning the solvency of banks. Here is the column: Concerned about your money after recent bank failures? You might want to keep those thoughts to yourself. While some rushed to get their...

Want to understand why our nation faces a $31 trillion national debt and few politicians willing to do something about it? A recent Politico story provides a helpful guide.While the press and the left (but I repeat myself) view catastrophic climate change as a certainty — a prism that makes leftists’ big-government solutions to the “climate crisis” plausible — it takes a far more skeptical tone toward conservative proposals for entitlement reform. In this vein, Natalie Allison’s story about conservatives supporting the “privatization” of Social Security and Medicare uses several tactics to marginalize lawmakers courageous enough to propose reforms that...

New research from Sarah Arnett examines states’ abilities to meet their financial obligations in the face of state budget challenges that have far outlasted the Great Recession. Fiscal simulations by the Government Accountability Office suggest that despite recent gains in tax revenues and pension assets, the long-term outlook for states’ fiscal condition is negative (GAO 2013). These simulations predict that states will have yearly difficulties balancing revenues and expenditures due, in part, to rising health care costs and the cost of funding state and local pensions. Arnett uses four different indices to analyze state solvency using each state’s fiscal year...

With most of Washington locked in a debate over just how big a bite should be taken out of a (relatively small) portion of overall government spending, one group of senators is pushing forward to face larger budget challenge. President Barack Obama has kept a cautious distance from the recommendations issued last year by his own commission on fiscal responsibility — particularly when it comes to entitlements like Social Security. But this bipartisan group of six senators, led by Sen. Mark Warner, D- Va., and Saxby Chambliss, R- Ga., is keeping the commission's proposals alive and drafting them into legislation....

Fewer banks, more problems. That's one take on the state of the banking industry, via the latest review issued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The number of banks fell for the 25th straight year in 2010, FDIC data show. The agency's deposit insurance fund now covers 7,657 banks and thrifts. That's down 25% from 1999 levels and 58% below the 1985 peak. At the same time, the number of banks at risk of failure continues to climb. The FDIC says 884 institutions rate dishonorable mention (anonymously, of course) on its problem list. That number has risen for 17 straight...

Tuesday, November 09, 2010 10:08:03 AM (CH) Chinese rating agency Dagong Global Credit downgrades US credit rating due to QE program (update) - Chinese press - Cut long term US sovereign rating one notch to A+ from AA, with a negative outlook. - "The serious defects in the U.S. economy will lead to long-term recession and fundamentally lower the national solvency. The credit crisis is far from over in the United States and the U.S. economy will be in a long-term recession." Weaker dollar will hurt US ability to attract dollar capital reflow. "In essence, the U.S. government's move to...

This post from The Economist's Democracy in America blog seems pretty compelling on the surface. Unfortunately, it is based on a basic misunderstanding of how the U.S. health system works and the sources of cost growth. The post, by "M.S.," notes that Paul Ryan's plan to transform Medicare from a defined benefit to a limited defined contribution program toward the purchase of insurance is a departure from current practice, which is accurate. She or he then makes a number of interesting extrapolations from said departure. Under Mr Ryan's proposal, starting in 2021, Medicare would be gradually eliminated. Instead, seniors would...

Dear Fed: The Problem is Solvency, Not Liquidity John M. Mason The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank are all keeping interest rates exceedingly low and are continuing to engage in “quantitative easing.” The central banks have claimed that they are caught in a “liquidity trap” and cannot force interest rates to go any lower, especially below zero. Their solution is to continue to force liquidity into the banking system in order to keep the financial system functioning and to encourage commercial banks to start lending again. /snip The classic central bank response to a...

How to Save Social Security and Make It Solvent Again The first of the Baby Boomers filed for retirement benefits starting January 1, 2008. Millions more will follow in the near future. The system is set to collapse without either a massive increase in taxes, a massive reduction in benefits or a combination of the two. Everyone knows this, but nobody wants to do anything about it-- at least not openly. Some politicians feel we may buy a little more time by flooding the country with illegal immigrants who, it is hoped, will pay taxes but not stick around...

On Tuesday, President Bush announced that the federal budget deficit will be $100 billion lower than initially expected due to higher levels of economic growth. This is the third consecutive year substantial downward revisions were made to the deficit as part of the administration’s mid-year budget review. The president further claimed that the nation is ahead of schedule by one year in its goal to cut the budget deficit in half. On the surface this appears to be good news. Yet the biggest mistake the conservative movement could make is to focus on the budget deficit. The deficit is an...

...It's time for a new approach. But, before I tell you what it is, understand why the current efforts are failing: * Americans have grown used to Social Security over 70 years, and change is both threatening and confusing. * Reform has no strong constituency to rally support. Financial-services firms, for example, might benefit from the proposed personal accounts, but, at the same time, these firms fear that strict regulations, applied to the new accounts, would spread to 401(k) plans and other lucrative tax-favored plans that currently exist. * Opponents, mainly AARP (the seniors' lobby), have mounted a wildly distorted...

Give President Bush credit for tenacity. Facing nearly total Democratic opposition and low poll numbers, he nonetheless raised the ante on Social Security last week. The President embraced "progressive indexing" of benefits, in the hope of breaking up the political logjam. As a policy matter, this at least challenges Democrats to honor their own principles. For months they've been saying they really do want to do something about Social Security "solvency," which means shoring up its inevitable financing shortfall. By adjusting the formula for future benefits based on income, Mr. Bush has now embraced the "fairness" claims that Democrats say...

Also: Look Below for CONTACT INFO for EVERY SINGLE STATE Washington, DC, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- AARP, the big lobby for older U.S. residents, plans to spend $5 million on a two-week ad campaign against a White House plan to privatize Social Security. "This is our signature issue," said Christine M. Donohoo, chief communications officer for AARP, which represents 36 million Americans 50 and older. "We will do what it takes." The full-page newspaper ads will begin appearing next week in 50 papers around the nation, warning that private Social Security accounts would be nothing but "Social Insecurity," the New...

<p>Denial, as the saying goes, is not just a river in Egypt. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report suggesting there will be a slightly lower actuarial deficit and a later insolvency date than previously estimated by the Social Security Administration itself. Opponents of Social Security reform immediately seized on the reported improvement in Social Security finances to argue against fixing the program.</p>