Entitlement Programs

Social Security advocates had a message last week for an audience of Maryland seniors on the 77th anniversary of the federal benefits program: Let's not be the last generation to retire. The Alliance for Retired Americans and Social Security Works attempted to enlist about 50 retirees at the Council House apartments in Suitland as part of an election-year army to spread the word about the positive impact they said Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare have had on generations of Marylanders.

NEW YORK -- Return to the early 1990s, when people could still say "Generation X" without irony, when the twentysomethings who would fuel the Internet economy were still being derided as slackers, and Rob Nelson was heralded as a rising political star on the cover of U.S. News and World Report.As the co-founder of the activist group Lead or Leave, Nelson challenged politicians to either cut the federal budget deficit in half and control runaway spending on entitlement programs or leave Washington by 1996.

President Clinton finds himself caught in Capitol Hill crossfire that could undermine his entire economic program. The situation is complicated because, in our view, dissident Democrats in the House are right on target in attacking the deficit and dissident Democrats in the Senate are dead wrong in trying to kill the president's energy tax.Mr. Clinton obviously hopes to emerge from this legislative mess triumphing over tormentors from within his own party on both issues and thereby short-circuiting Republican mischief-makers.

WASHINGTON -- One by one, Congress is killing the sacred cows.The $11 billion Superconducting Super Collider. The $190 million subsidy for wool and mohair producers. These and other pork barrel projects, major and minor, have died in recent days.The reason? The big political spenders have run head-on into ever-tightening restraints on the federal budget and they have begun to make some tough, painful choices about projects that long had led charmed lives.The House has voted by big margins in recent weeks to reject legislative compromises with the Senate that included spending on controversial projects.

Many of us voted for President Obama as we believed he had the character, intelligence and the will to lead the country and to provide meaningful change. We voted for the man, but we also voted for the platform. A primary part of the platform was the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which will benefit all citizens. The Supreme Court has now ruled in favor of President Obama and all of the country. I have always been puzzled by the fierce opposition to this legislation. Why do some Americans begrudge other citizens access to the health care they need?

President Clinton has appointed a a Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement Reform that he insists will "grapple with real issues . . . not caps or gimmicks." The commission may do just that but don't count on this president, at least in his present term, to grapple with the sacrosanct granddaddy of all entitlement programs -- Social Security.While Mr. Clinton ducked this issue in his State of the Union address, the new federal budget book concedes that "in the very long run, Social Security costs are projected to increase sharply -- mostly as a result of the retirement of the baby boom population, but also because of increased life expectancies, and hence longer periods of retirement."

Park at marsh shouldn't be too developedYour July 18 article on the restoration of the trolley station at North Point State Park implied that there was no longer opposition to plans to overdevelop the Black Marsh wild land.For over three years now the Coalition to Preserve Black Marsh has been urging the Department of Natural Resources to locate a visitors center and parking near North Point Road where public sewer and water are available. By using hiking trails and shuttle buses, traffic through the park would be kept to the minimum.

The economy is President Bush's weakest electoral suit. He )) has presided over the longest, if not the deepest, economic downturn of any single presidency since the 1930s.He seeks re-election after almost four years that have left the nation more economically distressed, more deeply in debt, and more socially divided.The economic statistics for almost any sector are against him.The annual economic growth rate, as measured by gross domestic product, was 2.5 percent when he took office in January, 1989.

WASHINGTON -- In the name of fiscal prudence, Congress has huffed and puffed over the last few months to reduce federal spending by $40 billion over five years while simultaneously planning to erase these savings with additional tax cuts slated to be at least twice as big. Taken together, these two actions will increase the federal budget deficit, already hovering around $300 billion a year. There is widespread agreement that federal budget deficits - projected to explode as the baby boomers retire and health care-driven entitlement costs soar - pose grave risks to the U.S. economy.

In the last week, I've interviewed seven budget and tax analysts on my radio show. Near the end of each interview, I've asked, in so many words, whether the runaway federal budgets this year and next could, in their opinion, be brought under control before we race off the cliff and into a fiscal void. The consensus is that there are steps that could at least begin to do the job, but that political considerations make it unlikely. Tax policy analyst Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute did say, "If you're planning to live just another year or two, things look OK. " The good news, Mr. Mitchell said, is that the spending side of the new Obama budget unveiled the other day doesn't propose any big new initiatives to expand the burden of government.