Gene Steuerle holds forth on the very undemocratic impact of our generation's promises to ourselves on the tax burden of the next:

At its core, democracy is about equal rights to vote—and have your representatives vote—on the nation's current priorities. But many recent laws attempt to deny us—and, even more so, our children—the opportunity to determine those priorities.

The reason is simple, but its effects are profound. Never before in U.S. history have so many promises been made to so many people for so many years into the future. Every additional promise, no matter what its merit, only attempts to tie that fiscal straightjacket tighter around future voters.

If our tax laws merely stay the same from 2006 to 2010, for instance, government revenues would rise by several hundred billion dollars. But guess what? Most of those revenue increases are already committed, mainly to the growing costs of our current health and retirement programs.

The Congressional Budget Office is to be commended for calling attention to a disturbing trend in life expectancy disparities between the rich and the poor that could have strong budgetary effects for Social Security and Medicare.

Here is the summary from CBO's analysis.

Congressional Budget Office 4/17/08

Growing Disparities in Life Expectancy

I agree with my partners in crime--Congress and the President should be able to conduct responsible budget policies even without putting any of it on autopilot.  But they don't conduct responsible budget policies, and, more importantly, we don't hold them accountable for this at election time, and so I think some type of automatic trigger could work. 

Via the Real Time Economics blog, here is a link to a paper by the Brookings-Heritage Fiscal Seminar that recommends that: 

• Congress and the president enact explicit long-term budgets for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that are sustainable, set limits on automatic spending growth, and reduce the relatively favorable budgetary treatment of these programs compared with other types of expenditures.
• The programs be reviewed on a regular schedule by the Social Security and Medicare Trustees or the Congressional Budget Office to determine whether they will remain within budgeted amounts.
• Significant long-term deviations from budgeted amounts trigger automatic adjustments in benefits, premiums, provider payments, or other revenues. These adjustments could only be over-ridden by an explicit vote of Congress and acceptance by the president.

My Beautiful and Talented Wife (The BTW) has declared that this is the weekend we will start to transition from winter to spring in our home. Cleaning is on the agenda starting Saturday morning, ao I thought I start with a few small items here.

I have only one thing to add to what Andrew and Pete, my two bloggers in crime here at Capital Gains and Games, have both posted on the Medicare trustees report: it was facinating to watch the Bush administration talk about the immediate need to deal with Medicare after having adamantly refused to deal with the problem since Inauguration Day 2001.

Picking up on Pete's post about the 2008 Trustees Report, I always go first to this table, Table IV.B7, which shows the present value of Social Security's unfunded obligations over an infinite horizon.  The number is $13.6 trillion, or 3.2% of taxable payroll or 1.1% of gross domestic product over the same horizon. 

I've blogged extensively about these summary numbers over at Vox Baby.  For the present post, I'd like to make two quick points.

At 2 p.m. today, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson presented the annual Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report. The good news is that the solvency of the trust funds hasn't changed much over the past year. The Social Security Trust Fund will remain solvent until 2041, and the Medicare Trust Fund until 2019.

Most Americans believe Social Security won't pay equal-value benefits in the future. Most Social Security experts say Social Security can be kept solvent well beyond the retirement of the Baby Boomers over the next 20 years with relatively modest changes to the GROWTH of future benefits and to payroll tax rates. Even if nothing were done, after 2041, Social Security could still pay 75 cents per dollar of benefits due into the future.