Some Unhappy News About Medicare and Social Security
You’ll hear a lot of vague talk during the 2016 presidential election about “reforming” Social Security and Medicare. That’s because “reform” sounds a lot better than “cut,” “ration,” or “give up on.” Politicians, the conventional wisdom goes, don’t get elected by telling people bad news. But Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who says he’s “92-and-a-half percent sure” he’s going to run for president as a Republican — plans to do just that. “I’m going to ask [people] to give up a little bit to make sure the system doesn’t fail,” Graham tells me in the video above. “If we don’t, the baby boomers are going to wipe out Medicare and Social Security. We’ll become Greece.”….Graham wants to address the problem now and get entitlement funding in place for generations, and he plans to use a presidential campaign to spread the word. “Republicans have to clean up the tax code and eliminate some deductions for the few at the expense of the many,” he says. “Democrats have to agree to means-test benefits and adjust the age of retirement.” Read more…