Taxpayers' bill leaps by trillions

[flashl]

The federal government's long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement.

That's double the red ink of a year earlier.

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That's nearly $500,000 per household.

When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal debt such as mortgages.

The $2.5 trillion in federal liabilities dwarfs the $162 billion the government officially announced as last year's deficit, down from $248 billion a year earlier.

"We're running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not the hundreds of billions of dollars we're being told," says Sheila Weinberg, chief executive of the Institute for Truth in Accounting of Chicago.

The reason for the discrepancy: Accounting standards require corporations and state governments to count new financial obligations, even if the payments will be made later. The federal government doesn't follow that rule. Instead of counting lifetime benefits for programs such as Social Security, the government counts the cost of benefits for the current year.

USA Today

[PSPS]

1. This is just a RW hit piece

It's silly for the article to claim that a liability in perpetuity be factored against a single year's books.

This looks like another trial baloon for the next assault to dismantle ("privatize") Social Security and Medicare using the GOP fake math. The loyal bushie at the helm of SS routinely lies about the solvency of the fund. In fact, they play a recording of lies and propaganda when you're on hold.

[Warpy]

2. Exactly, plus the oldest boomers won't be ready for Medicare

for another 4 years. You can't get it until you're 66 now, leaving more and more of us with no insurance for a very long time between we're age discriminated out of our well paid jobs and scrambling for a patchwork of low paid, entry level or dead end service jobs to tide us over, whether or not we take early retirement at 62.

You'd think they'd do at least a little research, but hey, they're right wing liars. Being a right wing liar means thinking with your butt and never admitting how wrong you are.

[SharonAnn]

3. We're using the current Social Security surplus $$ to fund the government so that

the wealthy can have tax cuts.

The problem is that we (the soon to be retired) have accumulated a vast surplus and we are holding "bonds" from the U. S. government for those surplus funds. There are two things coming:

1. When there's no longer a surplus of money coming in to the government to run its daily operations, taxes will have to be raised.

2. When this "surplus" has to be paid back to us, taxes will have to be raised some more.

The wealthy don't want to pay taxes so they're trying to get us all to agree not to claim out money from the government.

It's just the usual thing, the greed of the wealthy.

There's not enough money in the world for them. Especially not enough of "other people's money".