It also happens to be a fact. When you eliminate defense and entitlement/welfare spending (that are on automatic pilot), and debt servicing costs so called discretionary spending used to run the rest of the government is only 17% of the budget. Entitlements are the fastest growing part of the budget.
So they're held separately ? I completely agree in the technical sense. But then let's look at 2 pie charts. One for these "separate" programs, and one for everything else. The mere fact that the gubmint and other concerned institutions have now lumped all into one pie chart is the beginning of mind games that teenagers play to justify things. Obviously, it's presented as one pie chart so voila - it looks like more than half of our "spending problem" is SS/Med. The Social Security Trust Fund was created in 1939 as part of the Amendments enacted in that year. From its inception, the Trust Fund has always worked the same way. The Social Security Trust Fund has never been "put into the general fund of the government." Funny, I never saw pie charts like this until a few years ago. The argument was never made this way as long as the OASDI trust funds had annual surpluses. As the tipping point approached, gubmint started the vulcan mind-meld mental games to convince people that they had to make do with smaller SS checks and they had to work longer before starting to collect.
SS went into the red in the early 1980s, which prompted the Faustian bargain that Reagan made with Tip O'Neill in 1983 that increased the retirement age for full benefits from 65 to 67, and levied taxes on SS earnings. It also forced all new federal hires into SS. The fact is that SS is actuarily unsustainable. It is a Ponzi scheme.
Government old-age benefit programs are an inducement to not save and not invest adequately, so they are a cruel lie.
SS was never meant to be a full retirement system although one-third of the current recipients have SS as their only income. I don't view them as a lie. If people are too dumb to save and prepare themselves for retirement, the responsibility falls upon them not the government. The problem is that the very people who did not save believe that the government should provide them with a comfortable retirement. And the Dems agree with them.
Yes, that's why Congress is so focused on "fixing" them by cutting outlays. If they do that, they can stop redeeming. They can go back to spending every dollar of tax revenue and borrowing,
You really can't cut outlays because there are 10,000 people retiring every day for the next 20 years. By 2030 one in 5 will be 65 or older--twice what it is now. Right now, the objective is to change the cost trajectory so it stops going up so fast and eventually will head back down once the baby boomers go through the system. Obamacare wants to control costs thru the IPAB, Ryan wants to do it thru premium support and competition with the patient having the funding and making the decisions. There will also be some means testing in terms of how much support the government will provide.
The fact is Congress has gotten the taxpayer way in over their head financially. Congress critters have always been told by their smarter, older peers that the economy eventually picks up and grows so borrowing is acceptable.
LOL. I blame the voters. The politicians give the voters exactly what they want. You get the government you deserve. Voters will vote out of office people who tell them the truth. We have a dumbed down electorate that is ill-informed and unengaged.
The showdown between those who receive money from the government is obviously what is looming in the not-too-distant future, unless the economy takes off so much that we miraculously have $3 to $4 trillion in tax revenue floating in every year. If not, the "Greek zone" is what we're flirting with.
$3 or $4 trillion won't be enough to sustain the current programs with the same benefits. They will consume every federal dollar. They must be reformed to reduce future liability. By 2030 there will be 2 workers for every retiree. You won't be able to tax enough to cover the costs. And with a $16 trillion national debt and growing, the debt servicing costs will continue to rise. The interest rates have been held to an artificially low rate by the Fed. If they return to historic rates, we will be looking at debt servicing costs approaching a trillion dollars a year. And then we will be Greece.
I'm not talking about funding, but the purpose of the spending. What is the purpose of MC if not a benefit to MC recipients ? Otherwise it would just be a payment to the healthcare industry for no purpose.
I don't understand your point.