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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (27616)	4/10/2008 11:03:20 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 71588

Re: "Any serious containment of the growth of government has to contain entitlement spending." No doubt! But there is plenty of wasteful and unproductive government spending to go around most everywhere one looks! I tend to want to focus mostly on the 'bottom line' issues... and only after agreeing on those then working backwards to the inputs and outflows that occasion the bottom line result. For example: demographic issues should always be a part of any discussion about 'transfer payment programs'. Obviously an aging society (such as we have now... but which will reverse by 2030 or so...) produces inevitable demands on health care and retirement programs, etc. Just as a society with younger-skewed age cohorts reverses that factor. CLEARLY though, given the out-of-control annually rising by double-digits costs of health care in our society --- and as confirmed by all the official government actuarial projections --- the government health care programs (reflecting inevitably the out-of-control growth rates in health care costs that pervade our society) are the FAR LARGER AND MORE SERIOUS PROBLEM when talking about the US government's transfer payment programs!