OCR Text |
Show PAGE 26 THE ZEPHYRJAN-FE- B 1996 generation retires. It will be exacerbated by increasing life expectancies that accompany ever improving (and ever more costly) medical technologies. In the face of these daunting problems, the Republicans passed sensible Medicare reform legislation last fall that incents seniors to move into managed care programs like, most of the rest of us, while preserving their existing options at a somewhat higher price. The Republicans proposal increased Medicare spending by 6.4 per year through 2002, approximately twice the rate of inflation. Clinton promptly counterattacked with a $20 million ad campaign asserting that Republicans were 'cutting" Medicare. It was patently false demagoguery, but it worked politically. The President's approval rating soared. Clinton could have (and perhaps should have) resisted the Republican budget on more principled grounds. But he did the Reagan thing - by promising a painless balanced budget based on overly optimistic assumptions about economic growth. I'm disappointed in the President, but the blame lies with all of us. Whether it's Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton doing the talking, we are too easily sold on the miracle cure. The truth is that the budget will never be balanced without reforming (ie. making significantly less generous) middle and upper class entitlements like Medicare, Social Security and federal pensions; We have to start punishing politicians who tell us pretty lies, and start rewarding those who tell it like it is. Only then can we start making ends meet. baby-boo- m BEYOND! COMMON DY HANK RUTTER MAKING ENDS MEET Finally, President Clinton has publicly committed to balance the budget. It was last alanced in 1969 - die year I graduated from high school. That was the only year the eds have made ends meet since Eisenhower was Instead of president. making hard choices about how much to tax and spend, the government has borrowed and spent instead, and slipped the bill to future generations. Because children don't vote and have no lobbyists, they are powerless to stop this relentless mortgaging of their future. Hie Republicans got President Clinton to agree to balance the budget in seven years - which will be vastly more important than the entire Contract with America if Clinton keeps lis word. The federal shutdown may have been more than just another paid vacation or government employees. It may actually have been worth it. Consider that the national debt is now $18,000 per person for each of us every man, woman and child. Sometime late this winter or early in spring, it will reach $5,000,000,000,000 (that's $5 trillion, or $5 million million). Deficit spending is now so institutionally entrenched that annual deficits are in the $150 to $200 billion range when the economy is good, and twice that when it's not. Uncle Sam is now by far the world's largest debtor. There are a host of ways in which the federal government wastes money - from defense to agriculture (for a slightly dated but still highly informative summary, read Hie Government Racket by Martin Gross). But the programs that most threaten the future of our children and grandchildren are entitlements - such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal pensions, food stamps and AFDC (i.e. welfare). Medicare will go bust first - sometime in 2002 if nothing is done. It is crucial to note that most entitlement money is not spent on the poor, but rather on the middle and upper classes. I'm talking about Social Security, Medicare and federal pensions. These are dollars that go overwhelmingly to relatively affluent older Americans. Persons over the age of 65 have higher average household assets and a higher percentage of home ownership than persons under 50. Why a couple with kids and high rent should pay higher, taxes so that millionaire seniors can have liver transplants at public expense mystifies me. But that's how Medicare works currently. One of the many myths about Medicare is that its recipients have earned their benefits by paying withholding taxes during their working years. Medicare is currently funded by a 1.45 payroll tax on both employer and employee. That relatively minor payroll tax (by comparison, Security is 62 on both employer and employee) obviously isn't enough - as evidenced by Medicare's impending bankruptcy. The average Medicare recipient receives 3 to 4 times the actuarial value of his contributions. They earn only 25 to 33 of their benefits, and the taxpayers pick up the remainder. Unyielding demographics indicate , the worst is yet to come - as more seniors are supported by fewer workers. It has already started but will hit with a vengeance around 2005 when the first wave of the twenty-somethi- ng THE WESTERN PLAZA, NEXT TO MeSTIFFS. .259-726- 5 THE WALL I recently made my first visit to our nation's capital in over 35 years. I walked past the White House, an elegant mansion, and down toward the Washington monument -scene of the recent 400,000 man march (go ahead, Farrakhan - sue me!) Then I headed toward the Lincoln Memorial to my real destination - the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. There are two parts to the Memorial - a bronze statue of three armed soldiers, and the Wall. The latter was designed and built to a national competition open to any pursuant U-citizen 18 years of. age or older. The winner was a 21 year old named Maya Yin Lang who conceived a memorial of such simplicity that it at first seems inappropriately plain. There are two long triangles of black granite set upright against the bermed earth and joined at an angle - one wall pointing to the Washington Monument, the other to the Lincoln Memorial. The walls are erf equal length, and gradually rise in height till they meet in the center. Inscribed on the walls are the names of each person who died in Vietnam. As I walked down the sidewalk reading the names (none of which I recognized), it occurred to me that each represented a person who was someone else's son, brother, husband or father. There are over 58,000 names - each someone who in the prime of his life in a foreign dvil war. I thought of my own resistance to the Vietnam War - in part motivated by my desire to avoid the fate of the men whose names I read. I remember how little I understood or appreciated the sacrifice they and their families made for me and like I me. people wept. The next day I visited the Holocaust Memorial which graphically details the nightmare of the concentration camps, and meticulously chronicles the evolution of the Nazi's program to exterminate Jews and other disfavored groups (which inducted, among others, Gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses). It started with census laws which categorized individuals into ethnic groups. In the case of mixed parentage, the state created different categories based on how many of an individual's grandparents were erf disfavored groups (the law reminded me of Denvers quota ordinance which detail describing how much white blood it takes to goes into Himmler-likdisqualify a person from being or Hispanic). Later, laws were passed forbidding intermarriage between Aryans and other ethnic groups. Still later, the property of Jews and other disfavored groups was confiscated and they were forced to move into ghettos, such as the one in Warsaw depicted in Schindler's List. Then came the Nazi's "Final Solution", the systematic extermination of individuals who were unable or unwilling to perform slave labor for the state in concentration camps like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. The Holocaust Memorial proves that the horrible loss of life suffered by the Allies in World War II was justified by die magnitude of the defeated evil The nagging question remains whether Hitler would have undertaken his "Final Solution" if the United States and Britain had earlier intervened. Is Bosnia more comparable to World War II or Vietnam? The Russian cabby Who drove me from the airport had his opinion. He grew up in Kiev and escaped Russia in the mid 70's. He noted that the Serbs and the Muslims had been killing each other for centuries. He thought there was nothing the American military could do to end the hatred. The cabby's bottom line - The soldiers will die for nothing." There are horrible tales of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia, but it's not all onesided as in Nazi Germany. All sides have committed and suffered atrocities. None of the combatants currently pose a military threat to any nation or people outside the former Yugoslavia. The arguments about "moral leadership", and preserving the status of NATO aren't as compelling to me as the names on the new wall that will be built when our troops finally leave Bosnia. Eachname wU1 represent a feUw citizen - someone's child, sibling, spouse or parent e African-Americ- an THANKS FOR A GREAT 1995. |