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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Trillions and trillions

Why isn't this a big scandal resulting in a call for heads to roll and jail time to be served?

The federal government's long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement.

That's double the red ink of a year earlier.

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That's nearly $500,000 per household.

[. . .]

We're running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not the hundreds of billions of dollars we're being told," says Sheila Weinberg, chief executive of the Institute for Truth in Accounting of Chicago.

The reason for the discrepancy: Accounting standards require corporations and state governments to count new financial obligations, even if the payments will be made later. The federal government doesn't follow that rule. Instead of counting lifetime benefits for programs such as Social Security, the government counts the cost of benefits for the current year.

If this were done in private business, heads would roll. But we just keep sending the same old reprobates back to keep doing the same old thing. And we're about to elect a president -- doesn't matter which one of the candidates ends up winning -- who will add even more to those deficits, aided by a Congress that . . .

. . .oh, never mind.

Comments

Nance
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 10:30am

You kids! Get off my lawn!

Leo Morris
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 10:36am

Yeah.

Bob G.
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 10:56am

...And STAY off!

(reprobates...good word - haven't heard that in some time)

;)

B.G.
(another curmudgeon-at-large)

Doug
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 12:29pm

If it were a private business, government wouldn't be spending money on sick old people. It's cheaper to let them die.

Nance
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 12:43pm

And why does the News-Sentinel keep endorsing the same old reprobates like Souder, Bayh, Lugar, BUSH? Why are the same old reprobates always some other district's reprobates?

Leo Morris
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 1:49pm

Because those old reprobates are usually challenged by new reporbates who would (see above). Now you're off the lawn and on the porch.

Leo Morris
Thu, 05/22/2008 - 2:24pm

Oh, and I think there must have been a compromise possible somewhere between "just let all the sick, old people die" and "let's rack up trillions in debt we can't possibly afford and not tell people about it." Also, I have news for you: Sick, old people tend to die, no matter what we do for them (since I'm getting fairly close to old-person status myself, I'm pretty sure this is so, no matter how much the idea really ticks me off). The fair question to ask is: How much money do we spend to try to head off that inevitability and how much money does that would leave for other things?

Art Droba J.D.,M.D.
Mon, 06/02/2008 - 5:16pm

Leo Morris,
Wow, You sound like a responsible person. Fact is some 80% of a persons lifetime health care expenses are incurred in the last six months of life. If doctors could they would keep the elderly comfotable in that time period. In the 1970's an excellent article was written called the $ 100,000 funeral. Drs know when a treatment has a good chance of extending life with good quality. E.G. hip replacements in certain otherwise healthy subjects. Unfortunately even a panel of doctors are not permitted to decide what or how much treatment is reasonable and beneficial. Everyone gets every and all treatments no matter how little benefit might be derived.

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