Washington Post via Mike Church
""Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth."
"Bernanke did not endorse any particular approach to reducing the deficit. But he laid out the "difficult choices."
"To avoid large and ultimately unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above," he said"
"His remarks highlighted the difficulties posed by funding these entitlement programs over the long term. With the population aging and medical costs rising faster than inflation, Medicare is set to become a major drain on the federal budget in the coming decades, though the recently passed health-care bill has delayed the date when the program will begin to require big infusions of cash."
"Social Security is already draining resources from the broader federal budget, as spending on benefits has risen above this year's Social Security tax collections. While that gap is expected to be fleeting, the program, the largest single item in the federal budget, is projected to require sustained support within the next 10 years."
"Obama has said he expects the commission [The presidentially appointed Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] to look at all options for reining in deficits, including cuts to entitlement programs, reductions in other spending and tax increases."
"On Tuesday, White House adviser Paul A. Volcker spoke in favor of higher taxes, telling an audience at a New York Historical Society event that the nation may have to consider a European-style sales tax, known as a value-added tax, to close the persistent budget gap."
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So, wow, you mean when more and more programs are added (don't forget the wages of everyone handling the programs and all the other related costs such as offices, buildings, paper work, etc etc etc), they need more tax dollars to run them? Shocking!
This situation has been coming for a long time and is a good example of what happens when you continually add social entitlement programs without ever examining and eliminating programs that are outdated and no longer pertinent to today's society. You cannot continue to tax a smaller and smaller portion of the public to sustain an ever growing percentage of the population that is no longer adding to the output of the country. Eventually the load on those carrying the burden of support becomes too much to bear and the system will collapse.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't going to say anything until after the fact, but ObamaCare has guaranteed Cap and tax becomes a reality. There is no other way to pay for all this spending. I was hoping they would defeat it on its own, but if I started talking about new carbon taxes to pay for universal health care it would just get the eco-nuts on side. Its all moot till 2012 now anyway.
ReplyDeleteDuh - the Demos are like our Libranos - they do not get that social programs require theft.
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