On the mid-July day Jeb Bush candidly told Sioux City Republicans he wants to curb federal favors to Iowa’s ethanol industry, he got a lucky pick-me-up from First Budget: How, asked a member of this ascendant advocacy group, would he
On the mid-July day Jeb Bush candidly told Sioux City Republicans he wants to curb federal favors to Iowa’s ethanol industry, he got a lucky pick-me-up from First Budget: How, asked a member of this ascendant advocacy group, would he balance federal revenue and spending?
Ethanol is but one drop in that bucket. The Sioux City Journal reports Bush, who favors raising the age at which Americans can draw Social Security, said he also backs a federal hiring freeze and not replacing all retirees. …
Haven’t heard of First Budget?
You would if you attended candidates’ events in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or other early caucus and primary states.
The nonpartisan group’s respected ancestors include the Concord Coalition, Fix the Debt and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, aka CRFB. Its members are pressing, politely but relentlessly, for answers about America’s perilous finances from the men and women who would be our 45th president.
The time for this pressure is right. President Next will have a progressively dicier debacle on his or her oft-shaken, well-manicured hands:
• President Barack Obama took office promising to spend political capital fixing federal finances, yet the predicament has worsened. Vast annual deficits have narrowed during his second term, but his Office of Management and Budget on July 14 projected our debt will be just less than a historically high 75 percent of our gross domestic product for a decade. Then, the percentage is likely to rise. …
• On July 22, federal trustees of Social Security and Medicare reported Social Security will be depleted by 2034, a year later than last year’s prediction. Benefits would drop by 21 percent for all recipients, a share that gradually rises to 27 percent. One component, the Social Security Disability Insurance fund, will be exhausted late next year; without a fix, benefits face an immediate 19 percent cut.
• The report predicts Medicare’s hospital trust fund can pay full benefits through 2030, the same projection as last year’s report. But the program will be under enormous pressure: It’s adding some 10,000 beneficiaries a day, and the ratio of workers who contribute payroll deductions to recipients who draw benefits is diving from 4-to-1 in 2000 to 2.4-to-1 in 2030. …
• Last week, Medicare and Medicaid actuaries projected U.S. health spending to grow at a 5.8 percent annual clip through 2024. That’s up from the 4 percent growth rate for 2007-13. …
Looming over these dangers is a current federal debt — that is, a federal taxpayers’ debt — of $18.3 trillion. …
Remember, this debt is a number we’re inflating by additional hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Ponder the Congressional Budget Office projection that, by 2039, our debt burden could reach 180 percent of GDP, higher than Greece’s currently calamitous 175 percent.
We’re putting all these projections in one editorial to explain why the next president has to do what others haven’t: Stop the runaway train headed at us all.
As for candidates always prattling that they want to “invest” more in schools, or defense, or a hundred other needs: At their events or in your talks with their surrogates, ask the questions First Budget volunteers are forcing politicians to confront. …
Then, let their answers guide your vote.
— Chicago Tribune
