The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up: Why American Needs Fundamental, Structural Entitlement Reform

The White House claims that they “already offered a plan to slice $340 billion from federal health programs,” but the numbers just don’t add up. Given the magnitude of America’s over $16 trillion debt and with Medicare set to go broke in just over a decade, the President’s so-called entitlement “proposal” is like trying to use a thimble to keep the Titanic afloat.  

Take a look at the facts:

• According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), over the next ten years Medicare will spend $7.78 trillion. In that same decade, Medicaid federal spending will be $4.59 trillion. In total federal spending on these two already unsustainable entitlement programs will be $12.3 Trillion.

• Total proposed cuts by the President?  $340 Billion over 10 years.

• So to fix the greatest drivers of the nation’s ever-growing $16 trillion debt, the President is proposing to “trim” them by 2.8 PERCENT while demanding $1.6 trillion in new revenues. Talk about the true definition of the phrase “tinkering around the edges.”

• To put this into perspective, that 2.8 percent isn’t even half the projected annual growth rate of Medicare, which is 6.3 percent according to CBO, or Medicaid, which is 8.1 percent according to the Office of the Actuary, CMS.

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