We need to worry about the deficits in 2015, 2020, 2025, and beyond--not about the deficits in 2009, 2010, and 2011...
The key to dealing with the deficits in 2015, 2020, 2025, and beyond is--you guessed it--health care. That is the entire ballgame...
[These] long-run deficits...are not much, much worse than they were in 2003--they are somewhat better. Obama has cut the long-run deficit. Bush boosted it. It remains a big problem--but it's not a problem of Clinton's or Obama's or Pelosi's or Reed's creation, it's a problem created by Bush and his cheerleaders
CEPR's done the leg work regarding this with their IOUSA Budget Deficit Calculator which:
allows you to see what the projected U.S. budget deficit would be, as a percentage of GDP, if the United States had the same per person health care costs as various other countries which enjoy longer life expectancies than the United States.
Its time we join the rest of the industrialized world and have some form of Universal Health Care reform--those who oppose competition in the marketplace, which would hurt the profits of insurance companies and help lower the costs for consumers--are the ones creating this long term crisis.
As if ranking 37th in the world for health care isn't bad enough for people... our kids are paying to subsidize private profits...
To see more on our progress in regards to the budget itself you can check out Congressional Budgets Pass Early Tests on Deficits and Economy, but Questions Remain from CBPP
On the whole, the budget plans that the House and Senate approved yesterday pass the twin tests of: (1) beginning to address long-term deficits, or at least not making these deficits worse; and (2) not undermining the fiscal stimulus Congress recently passed. [i] The Senate’s adoption, however, of amendments that are intended both to facilitate a further large tax cut for the estates of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and to make it less likely that Congress will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for people at the top of the income scale suggests that significant dangers lie ahead. The adoption of these measures raises questions about Senators’ professed concerns about deficits and debt and about whether Congress has the fortitude to begin making hard choices.
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