Congress, President Must Address Medicare 'Budget Chaos,' Op-Ed States

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 09 Apr 2008 - 12:00 PDT

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When Bear Stearns faced bankruptcy in March, "the federal government took unprecedented action" to address the problem, but the recent Medicare trustees' report, showing that the growing number of retirees and the rising costs of benefits threaten "the entire U.S. government with insolvency," has earned "little attention -- and virtually none from the presidential candidates," according to a Washington Times opinion piece by Brookings Institution scholars former Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.) and Ron Haskins, a former senior adviser to President Bush and former majority staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Frenzel and Haskins write that last week at the National Press Club, a "prestigious group of budget and policy experts" affiliated with Brookings, the Heritage Foundation, the Urban Institute and the American Enterprise Institute released proposals that would "constitute a major step away from budget chaos." The group recommended that Congress and the president enact 30-year budgets for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid; that Congress review the budgets every five years; and that automatic program cuts or revenue increases be "triggered if projected spending exceeds the budget." According to the authors, this "sensible proposal" would reveal the "outrageous condition of the long-term deficit" and force Congress and the president to "confront the nation's descent into budget chaos" mostly likely through "a combination of benefit cuts and revenue increases."

They write, "whatever solution federal policymakers develop, the Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid triggers will have fired the opening salvo," adding, "Or perhaps federal policymakers, including the presidential candidates, will simply continue ignoring the nation's descent into budget chaos" (Frenzel/Haskins, Washington Times, 4/7).

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