https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2011/index.html

The American Entitlement System consists of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and some other forms of welfare. The system in total makes up over 50% of the American federal gov't budget.

The 50% number isn't a problem in itself. The more pressing concern is that the number is growing exponentially and will never break even. The last year that the government was not running a deficit on this was in 2010.

The Government reported this problem in 2011. This isn't a partisan hit job.

tl;dr
Current Social Security is unsustainable and the system needs to be changed somehow.
I think Bush was right when he pushed for privatization of all three systems.

Our deficit started well before 2010.

Its got a huge surplus built up to help ride this out, at least it did until republicans started dipping into it to fund illegal wars.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Apr 15 2018 04:08pm

Social Security is paid for by every person that works, in the US. Each person, more or less, pays his own future Social Security, out of each paycheck.
This system worked fine, right up until the US govt. started loaning themselves some money from the SS fund. Then didn't pay it back.

Medicare Part A comes with Social Security, Part B, C, D etc., are payed for by the SS recipient.

Yes, the amount of folks on SS grows exponentially, but so does the amount of folks paying INTO SS all their working lives. All that has to happen to get SS back on track, is for the govt. to pay back what they took from SS. Well, and people that didn't work all their lives in the US and pay into SS, shouldn't get it.
If these two things are done, SS works fine.

A little research will show who enacted law to allow dipping into the coffers, you statement is a fabrication sir, sry

The defense budget was never close to comparable to any of the Entitlement Systems...

The dipping took place before Reagan. In fact, it was during his presidency, that it was first publicized that SS would go broke in 2017. Reagan made some changes which helped a bit, then more were made in 2010?
I think the current date for SS to go broke again, is 2034.

2035 estimation from 2011 hu ?

I guess the problem is bigger than just "social security"
Maybe it's cultural and irreversible, whatever if you cut or not social security, problem is elsewhere and you have to figure out who or what is causing this.

ps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Apr 15 2018 04:55pm

You can have open immigration or welfare programs, but not both
/thread