red states rule
05-14-2009, 02:03 PM
Well pres bush wanted to do something to try and reform SS the day after he won reelection in 2004 - and Dems balked and blocked any reform efforts
Like with Fannie and Freddie, Dems looked the other way and now more proof Pres Bush was right all along
Social Security, Medicare bleeding faster
The deep economic recession has brought the days of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare much closer, with Medicare's program for hospital stays already running in the red and Social Security expected to start taking in less cash than it pays out beginning in 2016.
A new report detailing the programs' deteriorating finances makes it clear that Congress will have to decide sooner than it had expected to either curtail the programs or find new sources of revenue to bolster them. Taxpayers and recipients probably will have to pay more as a result, analysts said.
Both programs will run out of cash faster than expected, the programs' trustees said Tuesday. The report revealed for the first time that because of rapidly declining revenues, the Medicare trust fund for hospital expenses has been collecting less in taxes and interest income than it pays out in benefits since last year.
The Medicare hospital trust fund will exhaust its reserves in 2017, rendering it insolvent two years earlier than the trustees predicted last year. Its unfunded obligation is $13.4 trillion, $1 trillion higher than last year's estimate. That amount would have to be deposited in an interest-earning account today in order for Medicare's hospital trust fund to be able to pay all its scheduled benefits over the next 75 years.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/13/social-security-medicare-trusts-quickly-running-dr/
Like with Fannie and Freddie, Dems looked the other way and now more proof Pres Bush was right all along
Social Security, Medicare bleeding faster
The deep economic recession has brought the days of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare much closer, with Medicare's program for hospital stays already running in the red and Social Security expected to start taking in less cash than it pays out beginning in 2016.
A new report detailing the programs' deteriorating finances makes it clear that Congress will have to decide sooner than it had expected to either curtail the programs or find new sources of revenue to bolster them. Taxpayers and recipients probably will have to pay more as a result, analysts said.
Both programs will run out of cash faster than expected, the programs' trustees said Tuesday. The report revealed for the first time that because of rapidly declining revenues, the Medicare trust fund for hospital expenses has been collecting less in taxes and interest income than it pays out in benefits since last year.
The Medicare hospital trust fund will exhaust its reserves in 2017, rendering it insolvent two years earlier than the trustees predicted last year. Its unfunded obligation is $13.4 trillion, $1 trillion higher than last year's estimate. That amount would have to be deposited in an interest-earning account today in order for Medicare's hospital trust fund to be able to pay all its scheduled benefits over the next 75 years.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/13/social-security-medicare-trusts-quickly-running-dr/