Prof. Boudreaux takes Paul Krugman to task on another effort in inanity:
Paul Krugman asserts that Social Security faces no financial crisis ("Played for a Sucker," November 16). His evidence? Peter Orszag’s and Philip Ellis’s statement that the largest fiscal problem confronting Uncle Sam is the projected growth in health-care costs. Mr. Krugman’s logic is as compelling as would be that of a physician who concludes that tuberculosis isn’t a serious illness because pancreatic cancer is even more lethal.
In 2005 testimony before Congress, the eminent economist Thomas Saving – appointed by President Clinton to serve as a Public Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds – acknowledged that Medicare and Medicaid are in worse financial shape than is Social Security. But Mr. Saving also warned that Social Security’s financial condition is precarious. Speaking for the Trustees, Mr. Saving said that action to fix Social Security’s coming insolvency "should not be deferred any longer than necessary for due deliberation and decision."
-Max Borders
I for one am not foolish enough to dismiss the Republican party’s deep concern for the the possible lack of funding for #1 social program. It’s not as if there’s been a stated goal to do away with FDR’s New Deal or to shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub or that the GOP emptied the federal budget surplus in 2001 into the pockets of the richest Americans.
As with the deep concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people in 2002 (as opposed to the silly assumption liberals had that seizing Iraq was about oil and a strong US presence in the middle east) I truly believe George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Grover Norquist that they are thinking “long term” to make sure there is available funding for the elderly years from now. They’ve shown nothing but the most serious fiscal policies and careful spending America has ever seen! I suppose liberals think it’s all some “game” to hand over the funding of social security to Wall Street and the corporate elite! Silly liberals!