GOP Idea: For Every $1 over 65; $1 under 18

By Paul   11/16/09 06:40 AM

Joe Biden was right when he talked about one of his father's favorite truisms: "My dad had an expression, 'Show me your budget, and I'll show you what you value." If this is the case, then our current spending habits need to be examined and the starkest contrast is examining the difference between what we spend on children and what we spend on seniors. Currently, we spend around $536 billion for K-12 education --- including federal, state, local and other funding sources. On the other hand, in 2008, the federal government spent $869 billion on Social Security and Medicare. (For those who are sticklers for details, I am not going to break down all of the other programs that affect each cohort. However, bear in mind that this does not include Medicaid costs which pay for nursing care, which is another significant outlay for seniors.)

So, as a country, we are already spending over $300 billion less on the future than we are on the past. Is this a recipe for global competitiveness? For furthering prosperity? Regardless, it is a fact, so we should ask the administration: "Just to be clear, spending money on people who have had their opportunities in life is more valuable than providing opportunities for those who have had none?"

However, GOPIdeas is dedicated to the task of providing better ideas, so here is one: guarantee that the overall spending on seniors will never rise by a greater dollar amount than the spending on children. Specifically, future spending on those under 18 must always exceed the increase in spending on those 65 and over.

Such a policy needs to be in place before the Baby Boomers reach retirement age, because that is when spending on entitlements will balloon --- that is the entire point. As a nation we need to make a statement that the future is more important than the past and such a statement would be made if the federal government mandated that we always spend more on children than seniors.

Hopefully, we are at a point at which our politicians will not take the easy way out and explode spending on children to mollify seniors, but if they did, we would surely be better off than we would be otherwise: skimping on future investment to pay for current spending.

Tags: Budget, Education, Health Care, Social Contract
Discussion (188)   Permalink

Reader Comments

  1. Posted by Paul on Mar 2, 2010
    Good article by the NYT on the malinvestment of public dollarsL

    http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/remembering-the-little-people-accounting-for-kids/

    Also a Brookings study buttresses the claim:

    http://www.urban.org/publications/412003.html
  2. Posted by Mike Cress Sr on Oct 3, 2010
    The threat to the US has shifted and we need to make some adjustments in response. In my view we need to change the mission of the National Guard. The need to be redesigned, reequipped and retrained to secure our borders, key infrastructure, and repond to natural and manmade emergencies. This should include reorganization into transportation, communications,engineer, Chemical defense,and medical units. The law should be changed so that they can assist local government gracefully. If we did this well a medical unit, for example, could be a routine cronic care facility for the local community. This would take pressure off Er facilities while providing a way for service members to train. This would also give us hundreds of facilities in case of a national emergency. Similar situations apply to MP, engineer, transportation, and communications. We pay for this by brings home troops from places like Japan where the war ended over 65 years ago
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