Social Security

It took the United States 193 years to accumulate its first trillion dollars of federal debt. We will add that much in the current fiscal year alone.

Washington fiddles while the entitlement problem metastasizes

Senators are coming together to examine ideas on paid family leave Wednesday, encouraged along by the support of first daughter and senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump.

We all will—in about eight years.

Let’s be honest: Congress was never really going to reform entitlements under House speaker Paul Ryan. The subject is campaign poison—the only way lawmakers would act proactively is if congressional terms were measured in decades instead of years.

Are Republicans in the Trump era deficit-hawks-in-name-only? Or does the party still have faithfulness toward reducing the federal deficit in meaningful ways. Between last week’s Republican-forged budget deal that ended a severely flawed, but effective, system of spending caps and the advent of…

President Trump’s second annual address to Congress passed Tuesday night without him mentioning a sole word about entitlement spending, continuing a deviation from the economically conservative Congress he inherited.

President Donald Trump’s new willingness to deal with Democratic leaders of Congress has conservatives worried. Is the president really with us anymore? Is he going to help his fellow partisans in Congress hold the line of spending, or is he going to become a Rockefeller-style Republican, cutting…

President Trump is no dummy. He chose to exchange gifts with the pope in Rome while leaving his budget director and Treasury secretary in Washington to respond to critics of his budget. Let them take the heat while he takes the bows for a successful trip.

Committee chairs in Congress look at White House budget proposals with something between indifference and disdain. Congress, not the White House, writes the budget, or so the thinking goes. So why, besides the law mandating he submit one, does a president spend so much time and energy crafting a…

It wasn't Ted Kennedy—not that he'd want it to be—but House speaker Paul Ryan quipped Tuesday morning that his dream of entitlement reform hadn't died.

Earlier Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told host John Dickerson that President-elect Trump is going to abide by his promise not to reform entitlement programs:

The Medicare trust fund that pays the hospital bills of elderly patients is set to run out of reserves two years earlier than previously projected, the program's trustees said Wednesday.

The fact that no one's spending much time discussing Social Security reform in the current presidential election is not necessarily a bad thing; campaigns can be terrible places to have serious discussions. Nevertheless, a few candidates and their advisers have put out vague plans: Senator Bernie…

It can be hard to say anything nice about a man whose administration would malevolently inflict a traffic jam on residents of the Tristate area, but Governor Chris Christie’s recent proposal aimed at fixing the country’s broken Social Security system may make him deserving of forgiveness. The plan…

The Mary Landrieu campaign is out with a new hit against the Louisiana Democrat's Republican opponent, Congressman Bill Cassidy. The 30-second ad focuses on Cassidy's support for policies that supposedly hurt senior citizens. Watch the video below:

Senator Mark Pryor is making entitlements an issue in the Arkansas Senate race. Both Pryor and his Democratic allies are hitting Republican nominee and House member Tom Cotton over his support for a budget proposal that would have, starting in 2022, gradually raised the retirement age for receiving…

Timothy Geithner, the former secretary of the Treasury Department, says the White House wanted him to lie in scheduled appearances on the Sunday TV talk shows. As Geithner writes in his new memoir:

Robert Samuelson's fine column in the Washington Post, “America the retirement home,” argues that “The budget debate’s central reality is that federal retirement programs, led by Social Security and Medicare, are crowding out most other government spending,” and that this is endangering the other…

First Lady Michelle Obama's social security number and credit report have been leaked online, the Associated Press reports.

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan knocked President Barack Obama for "shadowbox[ing] a straw man" in his inaugural address. Speaking Tuesday morning on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show to guest host Raymond Arroyo, Ryan responded to Obama's statement that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security "do not…

The head of the AARP has stated clearly where his organization stands on the matter of cutting entitlements. As Kate Ackley reports in Roll Call:

In 2008, Barack Obama promised to cut federal spending, cut wasteful programs, reform Medicare and Social Security, and create "5 million new jobs" in a "new energy economy." At Buzzfeed, Andrew Kaczynski has four videos of Obama making those promises at the town hall debate in 2008. Here, for…

Yesterday, when speaking via video to the AARP, President Obama said, “But what I’m not going to do, as a matter of principle, is to slash benefits or privatize Social Security and suddenly turn it over to Wall Street.”

Oxford, Ohio

A new chart set to be released by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee details an alarming fact: In the last three months, more Americans have joined disability than have found a job: 

One day before the Indiana primary, Dick Lugar has released a new ad accusing his opponent, Richard Mourdock, of wanting to "cut every single senior's Social Security." (Update: The ad was apparently released late last week.) The ad portrays an elderly woman talking about Mourdock's Social Security…

The 2012 Medicare and Social Security trustees’ reports have been released (see here and here). The headline is that the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will have insufficient reserves to pay full benefits beginning in 2024 (the same year that was projected in last year’s report).…

Robert Samuelson has a strong column today on how one of the biggest obstacles to Social Security reform might be psychological. Though FDR's original vision for the program was a "contributory pension plan" and most Americans are still under the the impression that this is what it is, the reality…

Is it just a coincidence that the people that President Obama nominates to fill high-level governmental posts tend to favor government-directed health care rationing?  Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now he’s nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social…

Politico: "Exclusive: Two women accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior"

“What do we want?” “Jobs!” “When do we want them?” “Now!”

Rick Perry has been catching some flak for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Some conservative purists defended the former frontrunner for “telling it like it is.” Maybe. But Perry’s 10th Amendment solution — which he slightly backed away from at the Fox/Google debate — could be even more…

Although Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would like to see his New Jersey counterpart run for president, Daniels said today that he doesn't see any signs Chris Christie will change his mind. “I personally didn’t press him, so I have nothing to report,” Daniels said of his meeting last Thursday with…

Talk radio host Laura Ingraham pressed Congressman Paul Ryan in an interview Tuesday on whether he agreed with Texas governor Rick Perry's claim that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme." Contrary to some reports, Ryan didn't directly say that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, but he noted that…

Charles Krauthammer writes that Social Security is, indeed, a Ponzi scheme.  It’s also “the most vital…of all social programs,” and it can easily be saved from collapse — mostly by (gradually) raising the age of eligibility:  “When Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, choosing 65 as the…

If a debate more than four months before the first vote is cast can influence the outcome of a presidential nomination race, the debate last night among eight Republicans should aid Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Seldom has there been as clear a winner.

During last week's GOP presidential debate, Rick Perry spent more time defending his "provocative" rhetoric than emphasizing that he wants to save Social Security. But in a USA Today op-ed, Perry changes his tone. He writes that we need a "frank and honest discussion" about the program, but makes…

Rick Perry's doubling down on his "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" rhetoric during last night's debate could be beneficial for him in a Republican primary but hurtful in a general election. And while the Mitt Romney campaign was quick to pounce on the statement with its not-so-subtle "PERRY DOES…

There is a certain irony, as well as much truth, in Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s drumbeat of warnings about the consequences of further cuts to U.S. military budgets of the sort threatened under the current deficit reduction law.

In today's Washington Post, Robert Samuelson argues that it was liberal protectors of the entitlements, not the Tea Party, that "won" the most in last week's debt deal. The military, he says, was the real loser:

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley asked President Obama whether he “can tell the folks at home that, no matter what happens, the Social Security checks are gonna go out on August the 3rd?” President Obama replied that it wasn’t just Social Security checks that would need to go out and that “I…

James Pethokoukis: The jobs report from hell.

"Obama move on Social Security puts him at odds with Dem leaders Reid, Pelosi"

In February, Defense secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded a cautionary note at a congressional hearing on the defense budget. "We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril," Gates warned members of Congress. "Retrenchment…

In proposing to cut another $400 billion from U.S. defense budgets over the next ten years as part of his deficit reduction counter-offer, Barack Obama’s words were few. Yet they were revealing.

If there is one thing that political strategists, pollsters, and elected officials of both parties have agreed on for decades, it’s that entitlement reform is a sure political loser. Social Security is the “third rail”—touch it and you die. Suggest changes to Medicaid and you don’t care about the…

Two days ago, I wrote that Republicans should be bold on entitlement reform. They should aggressively and sensibly make the case that, with mandatory spending by itself now surpassing total federal revenues (for this year, according to the president’s projections), we cannot in good conscience…

As Republicans contemplate what sort of budget they should propose (real budget solutions, not continuing resolutions), it's important to realize that they are in a somewhat enviable position: What is clearly best for the country is also likely best for them politically.

Wisconsin Republican congressman Paul Ryan, likely the next chair of the House Budget Committee, was on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning. Ryan said the United States needs "low tax rates," "sound and honest money," "regulations that are fair, predictable, transparent, [and] reasonable," and to "cut…

Last week, in an effort to limit the damage to congressional Democrats in November’s elections, President Obama set out in pursuit of the youth vote, traveling to several college campuses to rally the young activists who were so important to his presidential campaign. “What I want to do is just to…

It’s one month until Election Day and Florida governor Charlie Crist is desperate. When Crist launched his campaign more than a year ago he was leading conservative Marco Rubio by more than 30 points. Now, after having opted to run as an independent to avoid a humiliating defeat in the Republican…

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin delivered a speech at AEI today on the fight against big government. You can watch the speech below: