GET INVOLVED

Urban Institute scholar Gene Steuerle has run the numbers and found that for Medicare, retirees are getting a really good deal.

In a fascinating set of calculations, Steuerle and colleague Stephanie Rennane, looked at both Social Security and Medicare and estimated the levels of benefits relative to taxes (and premiums for Medicare) paid for many different levels of income and years of retirement.

For Social Security, prior generations received substantially more benefits than taxes paid, while current retirees and those in the future who earn average and above-average wages are scheduled to receive slightly less cash benefits than taxes paid. The lowest income workers are scheduled to still get more in benefits than taxes paid. 

For Medicare, however, their conclusion is that, "Past and current retirees, and most working age adults, will never pay for all of their benefits."

The basic reason is that Medicare payroll taxes, which only go towards Medicare Part A (hospital insurance), combined with premiums (which are set at levels to pay for about 25 percent of Medicare Part B costs), only cover 51 to 58 percent of total Medicare ...

The legal term severable normally gets little notice outside the world of constitutional law -- yet now it has become a big buzzword amongst health care analysts and federal budget wonks. The reason has to do with the numerous legal challenges to the Accountable Care Act's individual mandate to purchase health insurance. 

A U.S. District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia recently declared the mandate unconstitutional. He also declared it severable from the rest of the health care reform legislation. This means that even though he found that one provision is unconstitutional, he held that the rest of the legislative package is constitutional and can continue on its path to full implementation. If the courts ultimately agree with this judge's interpretation, the budgetary results could become disastrous without congressional action.

While we have discussed the primacy of the individual mandate in making health care reform work (here and here,) it makes sense to revisit the issue of...

My least favorite argument in deficit reduction debates is that a particular option can’t be chosen because it is too unpopular. If that criterion is strictly applied, we might as well fold our tents and wait for the inevitable fiscal crisis because we’ll never eliminate trillion-dollar deficits with “popular” options.

That message was clearly conveyed last week by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force, led by two veterans of past deficit-reduction efforts, Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin. Their report followed a similarly tough message from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the President’s bipartisan fiscal commission.

Elected officials have not flocked to embrace these reports and it is easy to see why. They propose spending cuts in popular programs. They challenge cherished tax breaks and raise revenues in the process. They produce howls of protest from powerful interest groups on the political left and right.

But they each do one more thing: They outline plausible paths to a sustainable fiscal policy.

As a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s task force, I’m very proud of the resulting report. We worked together in a spirit of cooperation and compromise....

The problem with campaign rhetoric is that you’re stuck with it if you win.

The danger is that people might just believe you can really do all the wondrous things you promise and if you don’t deliver, they get angry. That, in part, helps to explain what happened to President Obama and congressional Democrats last week.

Now, it’s the Republicans’ turn to see if they can live up to their campaign rhetoric. On the fiscal front, they have set a very high bar for themselves.

Republicans campaigned on a written pledge to put the nation on a path to a balanced budget by cutting spending and not raising taxes.

It is easy to see the political appeal in that promise. Most people think the deficit is too big and that the federal government spends too much. Very few want to see their taxes go up.

The problem with the Republicans’ pledge is that the numbers don’t add up.

Forget ideology and just look at the projections. Last year’s deficit came in at $1.3 trillion. This year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a deficit of $1.1 trillion. Beyond then, CBO projects 10-year deficits totaling $6.2 trillion.   

...