ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606070035
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
THE CAUSES of the fiscal difficulties confronting Medicare and Social Security are no great mystery.
In the case of Medicare, rising health-care costs could soon make the program insolvent - as early as the year 2001, according to the Medicare and Social Security trustees in their annual report last week. Farther into the future, the combination of longer lifespans, retirement of aging Baby Boomers and massive federal debt portend fiscal stress for both Medicare and Social Security, beginning about the year 2010.
Nor is there much mystery about the sorts of steps needed to forestall the crunches that otherwise will come. But containing Medicare costs, raising Medicare premiums, trimming Social Security benefits and balancing federal budgets, while key ingredients of a fiscal solution, are also the sources of political headache - at a time, unfortunately, when pain avoidance has become a bipartisan specialty.
To score political points in the budget battles, for example, President Clinton and the Democrats resorted to demagoguery in blasting Republican efforts to contain rising Medicare costs. The administration knows full well - three of the trustees who issued last week's dire warning are in Clinton's Cabinet - that the system cannot be sustained without serious, cost-saving reforms.
Particularly damaging to the goal of arriving at a responsible solution were the Democrats' attacks on the GOP proposal to raise Medicare premiums for the nonpoor elderly.
Republican insistence that they want only a slowdown in the increase in Medicare costs, while technically true, hasn't helped, either. It conveniently overlooks the narrowing of Medicare-payable care that their plans almost certainly will entail - a narrowing whose necessity ought to be acknowledged, not obscured by misleading mantras.
Social Security is, of course, the third rail of American politics: Touch it, and you're dead. But touch it someone must, if a generational explosion is to be avoided.
In the year 2010, as Baby Boomers begin to retire in big numbers and the ratio of contributing workers to benefit-drawing retirees starts to shrink to an eventual nadir of 3:1, Social Security payouts are expected to start outstripping Social Security revenues. True, Social Security surpluses are now being accumulated against that day. But these reserves are simply informal IOUs from the federal government to itself, and their repayment will depend on the willingness of post-2010 voters and politicians to do so.
One big step that could be taken now toward assuring sufficient Social Security reserves in the future would be political commitment to continued deficit and debt reduction. That ought to rule out shortsighted, pandering tax-cut pledges by either Bob Dole or Bill Clinton.
An agreement to avert Medicare and Social Security troubles may be too much to hope for in a presidential-election year. But is it too much to ask the candidates to avoid rhetoric and promises that will make an agreement difficult or impossible after the election is over?
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB