This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Obamacare Targets Entitlements - by Stephen Lendman
Meeting with the Washington Post's editorial staff on January 16, President-elect Obama pledged to reform entitlements saying the process would begin straightaway by convening a "fiscal responsibility summit" before delivering his first budget to Congress.
"What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further," he said. "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else's."
Key, he said, is reigning in entitlement costs by making "very difficult choices and....sacrifice(s)....Social Security, we can solve. The big problem is Medicare (and, of course, Medicaid covering 60 million in 2005), which (are) unsustainable."
In a major April 14 Georgetown University speech, he again highlighted the problem saying cutting health care costs and "restoring fiscal discipline" are two of the top "pillars" of his agenda.
"Let's not kid ourselves and suggest that we can solve this problem by trimming a few earmarks," he said. The "biggest cost drivers in our budget are entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, all of which get more and more expensive every year, (so) if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline - and I do - we will have to get serious about entitlement reform," implying a clear long-term goal of:
-- shifting the burden from Washington, handing it to the states, and ultimately to taxpayers directly with no government aid or indirectly through taxes.
The US Debt Clock.org shows why. Besides the official $11.9 trillion exponentially growing national debt (some economists say $15 trillion or more), the big problem is unfunded liabilities:
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
