Re: "Oh the "official" debt is $14T. $14T minus your $3.6T is about $10T."
Oh!
So what you were referring to was the total amount of US national debt, (and the amount that would still be on the books if even the largest of the currently proposed deficit reduction plans, the so-called "Grand Bargain" were adopted and implemented. The amount that supposedly would be on the books still some ten years hence.)
OK, well obviously the key to paying off the national debt (as we LEARNED the the nineteen nineties during the 'Clinton years' which was the LAST TIME we began to pay more debt off than we were still accumulating in new debts... although I can't help but point out that this was NOTHING NEW to supposedly "learn", and PRIOR to 1980 we had been mostly fairly steadily paying down the debt peak that we ran up during WW II....), is to:
1) Have strong GROWTH RATES in the economy. (Because a 'rising tide lifts all ships', and a strong economy increases revenues, which provides us money to both pay off debts and to cover current expenses). And,
2) STOP spending more than we have revenues to cover.
It AIN'T rocket science. We gotta put one foot forward at a time. (Despite the bill of goods a whole lot of politicians would like to sell to you. :-)
Re: "SS MC and MC are projected to outstrip revenues by $60 to $80T over the next 30 years."
The fast rising costs of all medical care (and the bad value we get for it here) is the driver behind the problems with federal health care spending. And those problems ARE serious. In fact, they are most likely the most difficult problem we have to solve as far as 'contributing factors to the chronic deficit spending' that Washington does.
On the other-hand, Social Security's problems are fairly EASILY FIXED by any number of possible minor tweaks. For example, even if we made no changes to the program at all, changes such as slowly raising retirement ages, or raising the cap on income levels subject to the tax, or means testing part of it, or whatever... even if we do nothing at all but manage to just get the economy growing by a slightly faster sustainable rate, say just 0.1% faster... then according to Social Security's actuaries the program's revenues and outlays are in balance for as far as seventy years into the future --- which is as far as they are able to project anything. And, don't forget please... we *also* have a demographic surge of young people, (soon to be young workers), coming along which 'mirrors' the baby boom and that will keep revenues for SS strong for decades. |
