Americans are entitled to entitlement reforms.
And they're entitled to it now.
Entitlement programs are eating away at our bloated federal budget. Without rapid changes to Social Security and Medicare, the programs will not meet their promise to our future generations.
Young Americans will be left programs that won't pay them full benefits, despite the fact that they'll have paid trillions of dollars into these programs.
Future generations will also be left with crippling debt, as uncontrollable entitlement spending spirals out of control. According to a 2002 Congressional Budget Office Report (CBO), government spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security could rise from 8 percent today to 21 percent in 2075.
It is important to note that entitlement programs - federal programs that guarantee a specific level of benefits to individuals who meet the legal requirements - do not face any significant spending oversight by the Congress.
These entitlement programs, with their fixed spending standards, are not subject to the restraints of our elected representatives, nor are they adaptive to today's continuously evolving economic conditions.
Take Social Security, for instance.
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme cloaked in the legitimacy of the federal government and good intentions. Social Security pays its beneficiaries with money collected through the 12.4 percent payroll taxes - which are matched by the employer - on current workers. Social Security depends on gaining enough revenue from existing workers to fund the benefits of its retirees.
However, rising life expectancy and Americans having fewer children have exposed vital weaknesses in the Social Security system. Namely, most projections show Social Security paying out more money than it takes beginning in 2017.
Likewise, Medicare and Medicaid entitlement programs also will place a perilous strain on America's economic future, and they also require personalization reform.
All of this, and we haven't even seen the full effects of President. Bush's recent Medicare drug program, signed into law in 2003. This law, set to cost $1.2 billion in the coming decade, is the largest entitlement program in U.S. history.
Its projected costs keep rising, too.
In 2005, the CBO released the Long-Term Budget Outlook, a comprehensive study which presented the troubling portrait of future entitlement spending growth in its full, and ugly, details.
According to reports, mandatory federal entitlement spending, now at 10.7 percent of GDP, will rise to 20.3 percent of our entire economy by 2050.
This is scary stuff.
Left alone, federal entitlement spending will bankrupt the very programs the government has pledged to provide. In order to preserve programs like Social Security and Medicare, we must reform them.
Given the economic forecasts, we need to reform them now, not later.
Personal Social Security and health-savings accounts are crucial components to any legitimate reform for Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs.
By granting personal ownership, choice and individual control, personalized Social Security and health-savings accounts will provide market incentives, competition, and fiscal security for the future beneficiaries of these programs.
Instead of cutting benefits or restricting qualifications for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we should adopt simple and safe personalization accounts, which will bring solvency and trust to these vital social-safety nets.
Failing to enact significant entitlement reform now, will fail average Americans.
We're entitled to more.
Reach the reporter at: mailto:macy.hanson@asuchoice.com.
