Government Ponzi Scheme Ready To Crumble Like Stale Cookie, Obama Officials Alarmed The Most

From Yahoo:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday. Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, a year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner, trustees reported.

I guess using a crisis to crash the economy with massive and silly spending, monetizing our debt, and muscling government into banks and industry doesn’t seem like such a good idea right now, huh?  The real story here is not that it is failing sooner than expected, it is that it is failing at all.  Social Security and Medicare claim millions of dollars a year from the paychecks of working Americans.  These funds are not put into a pool to pay the expenses of these programs.  They are spent, along with other tax revenues, on dubious pursuits like studying the link between alcohol and promiscuity among gay men in Argentina, or the billions we will pay to ACORN, so they’ll have funds to fight the charges of voter fraud brought as a result of their, well, voter fraud.  Or the Billions that we are giving to GE, so we can be inundated with messages about “green” this, and “green” that by their various (and numerous) media outlets, or so we can pay Keith Olberman’s salary, because there is nothing like a shill for the demented left nightly denouncing others as “The Worst Person In The World!!!11!!!!” on my tax dollar.  And yet the Democrats are using this occasion to show us just how concerned they are about this “crisis” that they have eagerly contributed to over the years.  Lil’ Timmy Geithner, known for his fantastically successful Turbo Tax Skillz, is the de facto head of these “trust funds”.  Wow.  I was able to say “Geithner”, “Tax”, and “Trust” in the same sentence without busting out into laughter.  When questioned about this impending crisis, he immediately adopted a serious pose, stroked his chin, and said

“the longer we wait to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security, the sooner those challenges will be upon us and the harder the options will be.”

He is right, of course, but I really don’t need ANOTHER tax hike when I expect the bums rush from double digit inflation any moment.

Lacking the courage or originality of thought to propose a solution that would work, Geitner stayed with the Obama Administration Game plan, and decided to say something that doesn’t address the issue at hand, but leads the attention of most people away from their inability to be honest problem solvers, with the aid of a willing media, which refuses to follow up, of course.

“Geithner said that President Barack Obama was committed to working with Congress to find ways to control runaway growth in both public and private health care expenditures, noting the promise Monday by major health care providers to trim costs by $2 trillion over the next decade.”

Gee, uh, thanks.  I guess.

Thankfully, there really are some people in D.C. who are not baffled by the bullshit.

“Instead of getting existing public programs in order right now, some are saying we should create a new government-run health insurance plan,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a reference to the administration’s health care proposals. “When we can’t afford the public health plan we have already, does it make sense to add more?”

House Republican leader John Boehner said the trustees report “confirms what we already knew: Our nation cannot afford to continue this reckless borrowing and spending spree.”

Amen, gentlemen.  We cannot keep spending on silly things, and we cannot continue to give away the store.   And I know this isn’t popular to say, but it was never supposed to be retirement.  It was supposed to be help.  If it is going to be preserved without taxing the snot out of the pool of workers paying in, it needs to be means tested, and benefits will have to be reduced.  And it will have to be dedicated when it comes in, period.  Entitlements have to stop if we are to survive.