This new enough, it is from August 2006
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/74xx/doc7492/08-17-BudgetUpdate.pdfHere is another great site by the House Budget Committee
http://www.budget.house.gov/chartsgraphs.htm“Dims” have not been a majority in either houses of congress since 1994. The last balanced federal budget submitted by a president was from a “Dim”.
The special interests that feed at the trough of public spending, count on people to be swayed and distracted by the empty ideology of the major parties. It is apparent they will not be soon disappointed.
Social Security and Medicare are income transfer schemes, there is no actual physical trust fund “lock box”, the revenues are dumped in with all the other tax revenue, and then the special interest hogs are sloped. When your old enough they give you a few kernels and tell you it is the money you paid in. The money you paid in went to someone else long ago.
The assets of the Medicare and Social Security “lock box” consist of government IOUs from the general fund, as the population ages these IOUs will grow larger. As both are entitlement programs, and are not part of the discretionary budget process, the only way to address the funding shortfall is to cut spending in other areas, increase the population of contributors, raise taxes, or cut benefits.
Cut spending in other areas? Pork barrel spending is unbound by party affiliation, look at how some of the homeland defense money was spent, or things like bridges to nowhere.
To increase the population of contributors would require a major increase in birth rate or a far looser immigration policy. Can you say guest worker- - - path to citizenship- - - amnesty?
Raise taxes? Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the guy behind the tree. Trouble is we cut down the trees for paper to print money on.
Cut benefits? Would you like to go first? On average, 80% of all lifetime health costs are incurred during the last 6 months of a person’s life.
So what do you want to do?:
Cut spending for education, the military, highways, farms, what? (you’ll need to find about 3.5 trillion plus another 7% more each year) (the legislator goes oink oink)
Make all illegal aliens welcome so we can tax them? (sounds like a “Dim”)
Pay more taxes? (sounds like a “Dim” again)
Die sooner so we can save some money? (conservative but not too compassionate)
Pretend that everything’s working just fine, because we’ll be dead and it won’t be our problem?
Life is no joke but funny things happen
jon