Rodent Regatta

What a conservative president would say about Medicare

By Craig J. Cantoni
(For Internet publication)

President Bush tarnished his conservative credentials when he increased the budget of the Department of Education by 11 percent and violated the Constitution by usurping states’ rights with his federal education standards. He threw the credentials away with recent his Medicare prescription drug program.

The program will cost at least $400 billion over the next 10 years and will create a long-term government obligation of $2.3 trillion, most of which will be passed to future generations.

If Bush were a true conservative, he would have made the following speech on Medicare and on Social Security.

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

The nation is facing a moral dilemma. I am here tonight to ask your help in solving the dilemma, for I know that Americans can be trusted to do what is fair and right.

The moral dilemma is this: On the one hand, your government made promises to seniors about Social Security and Medicare. A moral nation keeps those promises.

On the other hand, to keep those promises under the current Social Security and Medicare systems, your government has to send the bill to your children and grandchildren. A moral nation does not do that.

We are trapped in this moral dilemma because politicians of both parties have been lying to you about Social Security and Medicare for decades. I am going to tell you the truth tonight, regardless of the political consequences.

The truth is, we cannot add new benefits to either Medicare or Social Security, or even pay promised benefits, without stealing the money from future generations. Like you, I was taught that it is wrong to steal, especially from children.

The root of the problem is that the nation had a lot more workers per retiree when Social Security and Medicare were enacted. Over the years, the number of workers per retiree has plummeted as the amount of benefits per retiree has skyrocketed.

Every two kids born today will be supporting one retiree between them when they reach working age. Based on present trends, an estimated 60 percent of their earnings will be taken by the government in taxes over their working lives, much of it for the Social Security and Medicare benefits of retirees. Even serfs in medieval times did not have to give that much to the lord of the manor.

Most retirees do not feel wealthy, and an unfortunate number of them are destitute and in need of help from their fellow Americans. But as a group, seniors are wealthier than most other Americans. For example, they own 60 percent of the nation’s private wealth.

Something is not right when a wealthy retiree pulls up to a gas station in his motor home and is waited on by a clerk with two kids who earns $64 a day and who sees 15 percent of his meager pay, or $9.60, taken by the government to pay the Social Security and Medicare of the retiree. This kind of generational income transfer has to stop. With your help, I will stop it.

To stop it, and to solve our moral dilemma, I propose the following:

1. That promised Social Security and Medicare benefits be paid to current retirees.

2. That no new benefits be added to either program unless beneficiaries pay the total cost themselves and not transfer any of the cost to future generations.

3. That non-retirees be given the option to transfer their Social Security contributions to private retirement accounts and to establish private medical savings accounts for their health care needs when they retire.

4. That all limits be removed on what Americans can earn on a tax-free basis on their savings.

Details on these proposals are being given to Congress and to the media. Suffice it to say for now that the proposals are the only way to make Social Security and Medicare solvent and to stop passing an ever-larger bill from one generation to the next, in a gigantic Ponzi scheme.

I have nothing to gain and everything to lose politically by making these proposals. But I have everything to gain and nothing to lose morally by making them. And you have everything to gain and nothing to lose financially by embracing them. I ask you to do the right thing for your kids and grandkids, as I know you will.

God bless you and good night.

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Of course, President Bush will never make the above speech. He will not make it because he is not a conservative. He is, simply and sadly, a tax-and-spend Republican who has more in common with liberals on entitlements and other economic matters than with conservatives.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist, consultant and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.