| When President Bush delivers his State of the Union address tonight, his prescriptions for Social Security are likely to vault that issue to the front of the nation's political agenda. But Social Security's financial problems are a relatively small sliver of the far larger challenges posed by an aging population, economists say.
From untamed health care programs to military pensions, housing and heating assistance to coal-miners' benefits, programs for the elderly have proliferated and grown more generous, even in the face of an aging trend that demographers have long seen coming. In that light, the fight over Social Security marks only the beginning of a national debate over the cost of a graying society -- and the inevitable reallocation of resources that is sure to produce winners and losers, in the United States and around the world. "The question is whether we can support the elderly with a decent standard of living without imposing a crushing burden on the young," said Richard Jackson, director of the global aging initiative at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "Whether we can is a real concern." In just 10 years, spending on the elderly will total nearly $1.8 trillion, almost half the federal budget, according to new Brookings Institution and Congressional Budget Office projections. That is up from 29 percent in 1990 and 35 percent in 2000. ..snip.. Bush has offered no plan to slow the sharper growth in federal health care spending beyond his hope that the prescription drug benefit he approved for Medicare will cut down on costly hospitalizations and surgeries. Other countries are not likely to help foot the bill for the United States' aging population, as they currently do with the U.S. trade and budget deficits. The populations of Japan, Germany and other countries that have large pools of savings are aging even faster than the United States', and as they do, retirees will start to spend their nest eggs, sapping the capital that now helps drive business expansion and rising living standards worldwide, including in the United States. |
I sense a huge opportunity for the Dems on this. Stopping Bush's insane Social Security destruction scheme is a good start. Offering a truly workable comprehensive plan to address our graying society would be a perfect follow-up. In addition to being good for the nation, it would help reframe and revitalize the party's image across the nation. To be quite honest, we need to rethink everything we're doing in when it comes to seniors. And let's start with Bush's biggest domestic policy mistake in his first term - his pathetic excuse for a prescription drug benefit. This disaster, among other things, prohibits the federal government from using market forces to lower the cost of drugs.
Over the next decade this issue is going to dominate American politics in a way few issues ever have. Whichever party can get out in front with a series of smart, workable, comprehensive proposals could see electoral benefits for literally decades to come. And given that this issue is a natural one for the Democratic Party, well....
Paging Dr. Dean!
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