- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation - http://blog.heritage.org -

America Can’t Afford Inaction on Entitlements

Posted By Conn Carroll On January 28, 2008 @ 9:36 pm In Entitlements, Taxes & Spending | No Comments

President Bush’s State of the Union message once again calls on Congress to address the coming tsunami of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs. With 77 million baby boomers retiring, the ratio of taxpaying workers to retirees will fall to just 2:1. In the absence of reform, America would have to choose between permanently raising taxes by more than $11,000 per household, or eliminating every remaining federal program to fund those new costs [1].

Congress should follow the President’s lead and create a bipartisan commission [2] to come up with fast-track legislation to address this long-term fiscal imbalance. The price of inaction is simply too high.

Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/01/28/we-cant-afford-inaction-on-entitlements/

URLs in this post:

[1] choose between permanently raising taxes by more than $11,000 per household, or eliminating every remaining federal program to fund those new costs: http://www.heritage.org/research/budget/upload/bythenumbers.pdf

[2] create a bipartisan commission: http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed110507c.cfm

Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.