Random Thoughts: Legislative suicide? - Senior Beacon

While attending the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in March, I reconnected with a cousin of mine, Stuart Rosenthal, also originally from Fort Worth. As you can see from the link, Stuart is a successful publisher of a Senior newspaper in the Washington, DC area. Here is an editorial from his most recent publication discussing the problems of the deficit and senior programs. His editorial is timely and poignant.

http://seniorb.md.newsmemory.com/default.php?goTo=1&selDate=20100401

You may have to click on page 2 to get to this editorial.

Legislative suicide?

As publisher of the Beacon and chair of the Maryland Commission on Aging, I am used to advocating for programs and serv ices that address the needs of the region’s older adults.

Most of the time, that means lobbying for more govern ment funds.

So today, I want to lobby for something that may seem surprising: I want to ask our government leaders to face facts and address the dire structural, financial crisis our country is facing, even though that means we aging advocates will also have to face some unpleasant facts.

When I advocate for senior programs, I talk about the demographic realities of our aging population. I point out wherever I can how much our increasing longevity and the huge population bulge created by the 78 million baby boomers are changing the makeup of our society.

In 10 years, Maryland will look like Florida does today (with nearly one in five adults 65 and over). Fairfax County, Vir ginia is aging even faster than Mont gomery County and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland.

And as our “senior class” is growing fast, our working class and numbers of school age children are growing much more slowly or even shrinking.

This huge, but gradual, de mographic shift means we need to focus now on how to revise our government spend ing priorities, diverting more of our resources toward those in later life.

Even before our current recession, I often encountered deep denial of these facts among legislators and bureaucrats. But today, in themidst of constant budget short falls, things are even worse. Now cuts are being made in senior programs (as in al most all other government spending) even as the numbers and needs are rising.

And when it comes to national problems like funding for Social Security and Medicare, the pressures are even greater. Medicare’s hospital insurance fund has been facing annual deficits since 2008, and Social Security is heading for them shortly. In fact, it appears that even this year, So cial Security will be $28 billion in the hole (taking in that much less in Social Security taxes than it pays out in benefits in 2010) ac cording to business columnist Allan Sloan.

Many types of solutions have been pro posed to address Social Security’s prob lems: push off the retirement age, tax high er levels of income, raise payroll taxes, re duce benefits. There are also proposals for addressingMedicare’s shortfalls.

But these aren’t painless, and legislators won’t risk their reelection by even sug gesting that such things need to be done to preserve the programs.

Instead, Congress appears to be heaping fuel on the fire by passing expensive new entitlement programs in the healthcare arena. Yes, the recent legislation holds out the promise of cost savings in the long run, but much of those will materialize only if Congress acts in ways in the future that it hasn’t been able to in the past.

And what about the even larger prob lem of reining in federal deficits generally (now exceeding a trillion dollars a year)?

In an effort to address these while pre venting blame from attaching to individual members, Congress briefly contemplated appointing a bipartisan commission that would presumably call for a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Congress would then take a single vote on the entire package of suggested solutions.

While it was a cowardly and constitu tionally suspect way of addressing the issue, at least it was an attempt. But Con gress couldn’t even agree to the commis sion!

So President Obama has appointed a bi partisan presidential commission instead: One that doesn’t obligate Congress to vote on its results.

But this commission doesn’t face the facts, either. Its official task is to eliminate the federal deficit by 2015 — not counting interest payments on the national debt. Ac cording to the administration, the project ed 2015 deficit would be $752 billion— but $571 billion of that is for the interest pay ments that aren’t counted, according to columnist Robert J. Samuelson.

So even if the commission were to solve its stated problem, it would only address 24 percent of the deficit in 2015, and make no progress toward reducing the accumulated national debt, much less addressing long termneeds of Social Security andMedicare. What will it take to get our so-called lead ers motivated to do what needs to be done? Do we need our legislators to make a sui cide pact, with everymember willing to risk his or her job to get it done? Or do we need a more enlightened electorate, willing to re ward representatives whomake difficult de cisions rather than call for their ouster?

The decisions we need to make as a so ciety will result in short-term pain, no doubt. They will anger and possibly hurt many of those we care most about. But painful measures can’t be put off forever, and they can be mitigated by careful ad vance planning.

The time to start that planning has long since come.

I invite you to share your thoughts on this subject, or any others of concern to you, by writing us at: Letters to the Editor, The Beacon, P.O. Box 2227, Silver Spring, MD 20915-2227, or info@TheBeacon Newspapers.com.

Attending a reunion?

We’d like to hear from you if you are planning or attending a high school or col lege reunion in the area, or if you’ve recent ly attended one. Please contact our manag ing editor, Barbara Ruben, by calling (301) 949-9766 or e-mailingbarbara@theBeacon Newspapers.com.