The editorial in the Sunday Empire titled “The federal budget for all to see” by Romina Boccia of the Heritage Foundation was lacking a lot of information. The author talked about five parts of the federal budget — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the growing interest on our national debt — but ignored many facts about them.
Social Security is self-funded. None of our federal income taxes pay for the program. In fact, Social Security recipients not only paid Social Security taxes while working, but they also pay federal income taxes on their Social Security checks. The future funding problems with Social Security funds could easily be solved by Congress. AARP has brought forth numerous solutions, but Congress refuses to act. Simply removing the income cap ($118,500 for 2016) would take care of funding problems for many additional decades. Currently, Social Security tax withholdings stop at the cap.
Workers pay into Medicare. When they retire they also have to pay for the coverage. Medicare is not free; it has been earned.
Medicaid is to help the poor. As a nation that mostly claims to be Christian isn’t this the right thing to do, helping others?
Both Medicare and Medicaid costs could be dramatically reduced but Congress refuses to act. Prescription drugs are a major percentage of medical costs. Here are two problems. Congress passed a law that prohibits Medicare and Medicaid from soliciting bids on the open market for prescription drugs to lower the costs; both programs have to pay what the drug companies charge. In addition, Congress prohibits the importation of prescription drugs from other countries. Congress found that, “… Americans unjustly pay up to 5 times more to fill their prescriptions than consumers in other countries” and “… the Congressional Budget Office has found that the cost of prescription drugs are between 35 to 55 percent less in other highly-developed countries than in the United States.” (S.319 introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2011). So Congress is intentionally forcing higher costs of healthcare on Americans by prohibiting the importation of prescription drugs. The drug company lobbyists did their job, Congress did not.
The Affordable Care Act was passed to help people get insurance coverage and to protect Americans. Insurance companies dropped people who had a medical catastrophe and refused to insure people with preexisting conditions.
The last topic the author covered is the growing national debt and interest. She wrote, “The share of the public debt per American is already too high: more than $42,500.” This is incorrect data. According to U.S. government figures, the U.S. population for 2015 was 314,490,833 people and the national debt for 2015 was $18 trillion, so the correct figure is $57,000 per American. It appears her editorial was written many years ago and is just being recirculated again.
Past congresses and presidents passed budgets that increased our national debt. The American people are not the problem as she implies; past congresses and presidents are. If she truly is concerned, then the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank where she works, should be spending its annual budget ($112,690,000) informing the voters of the many failures of Congress and pushing for change, not blaming the American people.
Gary Miller,
Juneau