Debt Denialists: New at Reason

One of the most ominous and overlooked developments of the head-spinning 2016 presidential election has been that the winning candidates steadfastly refuse to speak the truth about how rapidly old-age entitlements are scarfing up the pie of federal spending. In fiscal year 2016, $2.47 trillion of the federal government’s $3.66 trillion in non-interest expenses came from the “mandatory spending” categories of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Within a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), those figures are projected to grow to $4.14 trillion out of $5.7 trillion.

Yet instead of addressing that reality, Donald Trump has campaigned as the Republican who would protect rather than tweak entitlements. “We’re going to save your Social Security without killing it like so many people want to do,” he said at a June 18 rally in Phoenix. “And your Medicare.” How will the GOP nominee overcome the cruel logic of actuarial tables, which show that the ratio of workers paying into the system to retirees receiving transfers continues to plunge from 16:1 back when Social Security was launched to less than 3:1 now? Through a combination of “dynamic” economic growth and an always-vague promise to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse.” As Steve Bell of the Bipartisan Policy Center told The Wall Street Journal in June, “Any notion of waste, fraud and abuse meeting our fiscal needs remains…silliness.” Not just silly, but sad! “Trump’s comments are just another kick in the stomach to all of us who have worked for more than 30 years for solvency for Social Security.”

The Democrats, if anything, have been worse. Insurgent runner-up Bernie Sanders promised to expand, not contract, both Social Security and Medicare, and after long negotiations he helped push those planks into the Democratic platform, widely hailed as the “most progressive” in party history. It is now Hillary Clinton’s official position to hike monthly Social Security benefits, boost cost-of-living increases, and reduce the age of Medicare eligibility, at least in terms of being able to “buy in” to the program, from 65 to 55. This at a time when mandatory spending plus debt service already accounts for around 70 cents of each federal dollar, in an era of historically low interest rates.

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