Maybe I am suffering from partisan sensitivity, but I think the headline at the top of page one in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the "impending fiscal crisis" is oddly timed and presented. The "fiscal crisis" that is on the way is one that I have been hearing about for, I kid you not, at least 30 years. As the old saying goes, demographics is the future that has already happened and this crisis is solely the result of 1)the government's choice to provide universal entitlement programs for retirees unrelated to need or to past contributions of the recipient and 2) the post WWII baby boom. It has nothing to do with Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" (although it may have something to do with the Democrats repeated demagoguery around social security reform) and presenting it a week before the election as something that is new and unremarked upon is odd.
Current operating deficits may be bad policy but the real crisis starts when my big brothers and sisters turn 65 and start collecting social security and Medicare. We have known this was going to happen for years (the old hippies were born in 1946), but we've done nothing. Reagan tried but the government has been raiding the social security trust fund for twenty years under both parties.
Its an important story, but it might have been nice to hear it when the Dems were trashing Bush for his "risky" proposal to try and fix the problem.
I don’t know who hires the head of the Government Accountability Office, but as the investigative arm of Congress, which the Republicans currently control, I too wonder about the motive for this campaign.
ReplyDeleteMy hope is voters will think about this major problem and realize Republicans are most likely to solve it.