Robert Samuelson: A dishonest budget debate - The Washington Post - 0 views
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t’s the math: In fiscal 2012, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and civil service and military retirement cost $1.7 trillion, about half the budget.
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As a share of national income, defense spending ($670 billion in 2012) is headed toward its lowest level since 1940.
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States’ Medicaid costs will increase with the number of aged and disabled, which represent two-thirds of Medicaid spending. All this will force higher taxes or reduce traditional state and local spending on schools, police, roads and parks.
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“for how long will we continue to sacrifice investments in our nation’s children and youth ... to spend more and more on the aged?”
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In a Pew poll, 87 percent of respondents favored present or greater Social Security spending; only 10 percent backed cuts. Results were similar for 18 of 19 programs, foreign aid being the exception.
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an aging America needs a new social compact: one recognizing that longer life expectancies justify gradual increases in Social Security’s and Medicare’s eligibility ages; one accepting that sizable numbers of well-off retirees can afford to pay more for their benefits or receive less; one that improves generational fairness by concentrating help for the elderly more on the needy and poor to lighten the burdens — in higher taxes and fewer public services — on workers; and one that limits health costs.
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Government is being slowly transformed into a vast old-age home, with everything else devalued and degraded.