The entitlement tsunami is here

byConn Carroll Senior Editorial Writer
posted August 29, 2011 at8:51am

When President Obama announced the debt-limit deal with Congress in late July, he claimed the legislation would result in “the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President.” We’re spending less now then we did over 50 years ago? How is that even possible? In short, it’s not.

The United States spent an inflation-adjusted $327 billion on non-defense spending in 1961, Eisenhower’s last fiscal year in office. In 2011, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report released Wednesday, we will spend $2.9 trillion. That’s almost 1000% more government spending! Even if we account for U.S. economic growth since 1961, Obama’s 2011 non-defense spending still far exceeds Eisnehower’s as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).

So how does Obama defend that fantastic claim? Simple. He ignores entitlement spending.

If you just pretend that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid don’t exist, non-defense discretionary spending is scheduled to fall from 3.4 percent in 2011 to 2.1 percent in 2015. According to White House data, that is lower than the 2.2 percent of GDP the Eisenhower administration spent on that same category of spending in 1961.

In fact, after peaking at $650 billion in 2011, non-defense discretionary spending is expected to be lower every year until 2018. But if non-defense discretionary spending is expected to be essentially flat over the next five years ($650 billion in 2011 compared to $657 billion in 2018) then why does the CBO project that total government spending will grow $700 billion over that same time? Because the entitlement spending tsunami that liberals have been saying is decades away from hitting us, is here today.

“Social Security has contributed not a single penny to the deficit,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this February. But when Annenburg’s FactCheck.org investigated Reid’s statement they concluded, “That’s not true.” According to the 2011 Trustees report, the Social Security system will pay out $46 billion more in benefits than it will take in this year. The same is true for the Medicare Parts A, B, and D -- programs which will pay out $272 billion more to hospitals, doctors, and drug companies then they will collect in revenues.

That is over $318 billion that just Social Security and Medicare are adding to the deficit in 2011. Throw in the $269 billion we’ll spend on Medicaid this year, and the big three entitlement programs added over half a trillion dollars to this year’s deficit all by themselves. By comparison, non-defense discretionary spending only rose $128 billion between 2008 and 2011. Our 2011 spending problem is an entitlement spending problem. And Obama has only made the entitlement tsunami wave worse.

Mere days after he was sworn into office, Obama expanded Medicaid’s Children’s Health Insurance program, adding $32 billion worth of spending through 2013 alone. Then Obamacare expanded Medicaid eligibility even further adding another $627 billion to the deficit through 2021. Obamacare also took $500 billion from Medicare to help pay for a brand new health insurance subsidy entitlement that the CBO predicts will add $777 billion to the debt through 2021.

Instead of reducing our immediate entitlement burden, Obama chose to expand some entitlements, steal money from others, and create brand new ones. If Republican candidates want to be taken seriously on deficit reduciton, they must begin by reducing entitlement spending today.

All of the Republican candidates have pledged they would repeal Obamacare if elected. And that is the best place to start tackling theproblem. But they are going to have to do more if our country is going to survive this man-made fiscal disaster.