Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Democrats always roll their eyes when conservatives talk about unsustainable entitlement spending, but it turns out, Social Security is going bankrupt much sooner than we think.
The Washington Examiner reports:
The Social Security disability program will run out of money in late 2016, a report issued Wednesday by the Social Security and Medicare trustees warned.
At that point, the 10.9 million beneficiaries of the program face an immediate 19 percent cut in benefits, unless Congress intervenes.
The combined trust fund for the retirement and disability programs is projected to run out by 2034, a slight improvement from last year’s estimate. The trust fund for Medicare hospital insurance will be depleted by 2030, unchanged from last year.
The new figures were published Wednesday as part of the annual update on the programs’ finances from the Social Security and Medicare trustees.
This announcement was a long time coming for anyone who has been paying attention to entitlement spending. There is no such thing as free money- government aid does not happen in a vacuum. The money has to be coming from somewhere. The government is spending beyond its means, and something’s gotta give.
Rather than enabling a culture of dependency, government should be empowering individuals to better themselves through education and financial independence. And if the government program is mismanaged to the point of going bankrupt, citizens should be able to opt out of the program entirely, and pay into an alternative private IRA or 401(k) plan so they can truly own their money down the road.
