What Will Happen With Our Social Security And Medicare Programs

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/03/26/0326socsec.html

While everyone is currently focusing on the election and the war going on, not many people think about the problems will we will soon have to face in the near future. Perhaps it is not us that will have to face it, but it may be our children or children’s children that have to suffer this burden. What I am talking about is about our Social Security and also our Medicare programs.

The source of our problem dates back to after World War II during the time of the baby boomers. Nearly 80 millions babies were born between 1945 and 1964. The first wave of these baby boomers started to receive these benefits this year. Due to this occurrence, Social Security and Medicare will be unable to pay off any benefits beginning in 2019 and 2041 respectively.

President Bush turned our $5.6 trillion surplus that he inherited from former President Bill Clinton into a $3 trillion deficit, which made it even more difficult for future policy makers to strengthen the two programs. The problem also arises when President Bush wants to pursue tax cuts and also guarantee Social Security and Medicare to all Americans.

Sometime this year, Medicare will use all of the money that it receives through payroll taxes and will start to take out of the accumulated reserves. In about three years, that same thing will happen to Social Security. But due to the accumulated funds, both programs can still fully paying benefits for many more years. With this in mind, we have to change the way we are currently budgeting our expenses.

Outcome already decided?

Today, at roughly 12 PM, in a press conference, top strategist Mark Penn just claimed that Hillary Clinton would be a better commander-in-chief than both Barrack Obama and John McCain. Later on, at 1:55 PM, on National Review Online, Larry Kudlow concluded that it was over for Clinton. She was terminated brutally by Obama in Wisconsin and possibly in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania too. In the article, Kudlow kept giving statistics after statistics, showing in concrete evidence how far left behind the Republican nominee was. Personally, I think the tone was a mixture of amusement and seriousness, as if the writer was treating this as a game that was better be taken seriously. Everyone seems to go with Obama, and the number of his white female voters even equals hers. I know that Obama has an advantage over Clinton since he does not have a husband – or wife in his case – who does not seem to be a lot of help lately, being harmful even; however, Clinton did not seem so bad and I did not expect her to lose badly like this. It seems that no matter what she does now, she cannot turn the table on Obama; in fact, the only thing she can do is withdrawing with grace before it gets even more humiliating. We now know the outcome of the primary before it ends. This is very different from how it is in my country, Vietnam. During many election years, the people are able to predict who would win but it is not because they are prophets or anything, but because there is only one party in Vietnam and many nominees, more often than not, are somehow related to those currently in power. Here in America, the system is more complicated yet simpler at the same time, ensuring a level of just and competitiveness in a presidential race. If the president ever turned out bad, the people could admit that it was their fault for voting for him or her, not some high-powers’ fault. It is reassuring.

Kudlow, Larry. “It’s Over.” National Review Online.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjA5OTJmZDZhM2ViMGNmNjE2MTVlMzkyNTE3NTU5Njg=