Social Security & Medicare Notes

Costs of private accounts

Bush's Massive New Spending Plan Dwarfs Military:

A new study by Jim Horney and Richard Kogan at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington-based research organization focused on fiscal and poverty issues, has found that the borrowing needed to fund President Bush's Social Security plan would cause the national debt to increase by a staggering 19.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2038. The borrowing doesn't represent a temporary transition cost, according to the study, and would lead to higher national debt until 2067…

Over those 39 years, these interest payments would total $6.5 trillion, again adjusted for inflation. In the decade starting in 2031, the U.S. would spend more servicing debt from the Bush Social Security plan than on the U.S. Army, Navy or Air Force.

Indeed, from 2011 to 2050, these interest payments would be more than the expected spending on all veteran benefits, child tax credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit combined, or more than three times the projected cost of homeland security - assuming all these programs grow roughly in line with the economy.

Source is Meteor Blades at The Next Hurrah.

I notice that the Republicans are not discussing the costs of the plan at all. But these are the deficit-loving politicians we fondly know as Republicans and their leader G. W. Bush.

posted by Richard @ 8:59 PM