Why Medicare Cuts Are Less And Less Likely

Only 48.5 percent of those aged 18-24 voted in 2008 compared to 72.4 percent of those aged 65-74. And the senior population is growing steadily. Bruce Bartlett spies political turmoil ahead:

[W]hat we see is that over the next ten years the percentage of the population that benefits from Social Security and Medicare is going to rise significantly and that this group of the population votes in higher percentages than those that pay for these programs. And those that will, over their lifetimes, bear the heaviest burden of paying for entitlement programs--the young--vote at the lowest rate of any age group.

I bring this up because so many right-wingers seem to think it will be a simple matter to slash or even abolish major entitlement programs into order to restore fiscal stability...[T]he sort of radical cuts or quasi-privatization that right-wingers favor is politically impossible now and will become even more politically impossible when a higher percentage of voters are on Medicare.If this is the case, then there are really only two options: slash non-entitlement spending on things like national defense or raise taxes. The option of doing nothing and just pushing the costs off onto our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren by running deficits and raising the debt/GDP ratio--which is what we are doing now--will at some point no longer be an option.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan