Though American politicians rarely acknowledge it, federal finances are relentlessly deteriorating almost entirely because of automatic growth in entitlement programs. We often lose sight of this reality whenever other events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a tax cut or an appropriated spending binge, cause a onetime worsening of the ...

Democrats want to seize the coronavirus crisis to close a decades-old funding gap in multiemployer retirement funds. At a time when Americans need to pull together to contain the coronavirus as well as the economic devastation it has unleashed, too many politicians are exploiting the moment to advance unrelated agendas. One egregious example ...

Last month, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) unveiled a comprehensive proposal to shore up multiemployer pension plans. Congress will have little choice but to consider such a proposal soon, to address a burgeoning crisis affecting workers in America’s multiemployer pension system. These workers face the loss ...

Earlier today, presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her proposal to ostensibly pay for the costs of Medicare for All (M4A) without raising taxes on the middle class. As published, the plan would not actually finance the costs of M4A. First, I will provide a top-line summary of the financing proposal. The remainder of this ...

The UI analysis substantiates what we already know—that Medicare for All would add at least $32 trillion to federal budget costs over its first 10 years. Last week, a group of scholars from the Urban Institute (UI) released cost estimates for several alternative approaches to health care reform, including an updated estimate of the cost ...

Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senator from Massachusetts and candidate for president, recently released a Social Security plan that would exacerbate many of the program’s existing problems while also creating several new ones. The plan was announced in an article she posted on Medium, along with an analysis authored by Moody’s Analytics’ Mark ...

Last week, a North Carolina state court panel threw out the current state legislative district map and ordered N.C’s General Assembly to enact a new one by Sept. 18. This article explains the substance of the panel’s decision and anticipates what it may mean for future district lines. The answer: Some change should be expected, but perhaps not ...

After my study of the costs of Medicare for All (M4A) was published last July, a fierce debate erupted over whether M4A, while dramatically increasing the costs borne by federal taxpayers, might nevertheless reduce total U.S. health expenditures. Now, just one year after my findings, we have substantial additional evidence that M4A would ...

One exchange from the first debate in Detroit this week between Democratic Party presidential candidates has already received substantial airplay. Its deeper significance warrants further exploration. The exchange was this one between former Congressman John Delaney and Senator Elizabeth Warren: Delaney: I think Democrats win when we run on ...

Advocates of Social Security expansion have declared their intention to move the “Social Security 2100 Act” through the House of Representatives before August recess. The bill, introduced by Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.), has more than 200 co-sponsors. Its sponsors deserve credit for putting forth a comprehensive Social Security plan that ...

I have had the privilege of testifying before congressional committees multiple times, both in my service as a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare, and as an academic expert on a range of public-policy issues. This list of 12 tips is written in an effort to offer helpful guidance to others who are invited to testify. #1: Be ...

My last article reviewed key lessons from the Social Security trustees’ annual report on that program’s financial status. This article presents four key lessons of the trustees’ companion report on the Medicare program. #1: Although Social Security’s actuarial shortfall is larger, the threat of insolvency is more immediate in the Medicare ...

The Social Security trustees issued their annual report on the program’s financial condition earlier this year, along with their companion report on Medicare. As in previous years, these reports contain sobering news that lawmakers and the public need to know. The trustees who authored these reports are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, ...

Last year I published a study with the Mercatus Center projecting that enacting Medicare for All (M4A) would add at least $32.6 trillion to federal budget costs over the first 10 years. After the study was published, some advocates misattributed a finding to it, specifically that M4A would lower national healthcare costs by $2 trillion over ...

On May 20, Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) introduced the Prioritizing Our Workers Act of 2019, also introduced in the Senate by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.V.). The technical explanation of the bill is that it would classify unfunded worker pension benefits as “administrative expenses” in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding. A layman’s explanation is ...

Many Members of Congress and presidential candidates, including Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, have embraced “Medicare for All” (M4A), the catch-all phrase used to describe proposals that would replace our current blend of private and public health insurance with a single-payer system run by the federal ...

This week, Social Security’s trustees issued a dire warning. In their 2019 annual report, they announced that future costs for the program will be 20 percent higher than projected revenue. As soon as next year, Social Security’s yearly expenses are expected to exceed its income — forcing the program to begin drawing down its trust funds. ...

The state of Utah recently enacted legislation to expand its Medicaid program, albeit by less than provided for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Specifically, the Utah law would bring childless adults with incomes below the federal poverty line onto Medicaid, rather than all those with incomes up to 138% of the poverty line as specified in ...

On January 30, Congressman John Larson (D-CT1) and over 200 cosponsors reintroduced the Social Security 2100 Act, a bill to markedly increase both future Social Security benefits and costs. The proposal seeks to do nothing less than to reset the Social Security policy discussion, in a manner similar to progressives’ ongoing quest for “Medicare ...

Last month, Morgan Stanley published a research report projecting that US labor force growth will exceed Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections starting in the 2020s, and also asserting that this faster growth “should” delay Social Security’s insolvency, “perhaps by decades.” Specifically, the report stated that “a faster increase in ...

Multiemployer pensions are in crisis. Lawmakers established a joint select congressional committee in February 2018 to address the problem, but it was unable to forge an agreement by its November 30 deadline. Recent reports suggest no solution will be legislated this year, and that pension sponsors will push aggressively for an expensive ...

In March of this year the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a presentation on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) six years in. The document portrays the ACA in a very favorable light, as one would expect for one of the Obama administration's signature pieces of legislation. A fuller and more objective understanding of the ...

At a time when the presidential campaigns seem to be about everything other than the federal budget, the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) serve as a stark reminder that Americans will suffer grave economic consequences if the federal government does not repair its broken fiscal practices. It is often rightly noted ...

Today the Mercatus Center unveiled a study by Bradley Herring (Johns Hopkins University) and Erin Trish (University of Southern California) finding that the much-discussed health spending slowdown that continued in 2010-13 "can likely be explained by longstanding patterns" over more than two decades, rather than suggesting a recent ...

The New York Times recently published an editorial highlighting partisan differences over Social Security, advocating that current-law benefit growth be increased, and implicitly rejecting bipartisan calls to include some cost containment in legislated financing reforms. The Times, like everyone else, is within its rights to present its views ...

The omnibus spending bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama delays the onset of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s so-called "Cadillac plan tax" for two years. The new law also weakens the effect of the tax (assuming it's ever collected) by making it deductible, as noted by my Mercatus Center colleague Brian Blase. ...

Both the House and Senate versions of the budget reconciliation bill moving through Congress would repeal several key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This piece focuses on the ACA's so-called "risk corridors," which the Senate majority also attempted to repeal though failing on a point of order. The reconciliation process ...

My usual custom when writing about Medicare and Social Security finances is to simply present the relevant data instead of discussing others' commentaries about the programs. After this year's Medicare trustees' report was released, however, a subsequent Paul Krugman column prompted a number of questions from his readers, suggesting it would ...

My most recent article for e21 summarized the 2015 Social Security trustees' report released last week. This companion piece does the same for the Medicare report. These are the last annual reports in which I participated as a public trustee based on my term that ended last autumn. The Medicare report shows that the program is on an ...

Last week saw the publication of the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees' reports, along with an accompanying summary. The occasion was bittersweet for me, these being the last such reports in which I participated as a public trustee on the basis of my term ending last autumn. It has been a high honor to serve, largely because of ...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just released a report on the budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Press reports reflect what CBO has reported pursuant to its scoring instructions – specifically, that relative to its scorekeeping baseline, repeal of the ACA would worsen the federal deficit ...

My last piece reviewed several recent criticisms of the Social Security trustees' projection history by Konstantin Kashin, Gary King and Samir Soneji. This piece reviews other criticisms by the same authors, this time focusing on process and presentation. As I indicated in my last piece, their factual observations regarding the projections ...

For the last four years I have had the honor of serving as one of Social Security's two public trustees (along with former CBO Director Robert D. Reischauer), co-authoring the annual trustees' reports. These reports are required under the Social Security Act and serve as the primary resource on Social Security's current and projected ...

The Congressional Budget Office's new report shows updated cost projections for the insurance coverage expansion in the Affordable Care Act. With the debate over the ACA remaining so intensely polarized, advocates moved aggressively to spin this routine update as reflecting favorably on the law. A front-page article in the Washington Post ...

When his budget proposals were recently released, President Obama stated, "I want to work with Congress to replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America." That quotation neatly summarizes how the White House is framing the basic trade-off faced in federal budgeting: between "austerity" (i.e., severe cuts in spending ...

This past week provided an important example of the anticipated effects of the Affordable Care Act coming to pass. Walmart has announced that it will no longer offer health insurance for 26,000 part-time workers, prompting a piece at Vox recognizing that this termination of coverage occurred because "Obamacare changes the calculus on ...

Much of Washington’s ongoing economic policy debate focuses on reducing poverty, with many arguing to raise the minimum wage and expand government programs. But this focus ignores two simple truths.

First, poverty arises from sagging employment, our nation’s greatest economic challenge today and for the next several years. Most of those aged ...

Followers of the national healthcare policy debate may have noticed an interesting recent turn. After the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s troubled rollout, the law’s supporters shifted to a new line to promote it: specifically, crediting the ACA with slowing the growth of national healthcare costs.This line is being pushed aggressively by the ...

Public support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has plummeted now that the oft-repeated claim that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” is widely understood to be untrue. Despite previous assurances, millions of Americans are now grappling with ACA-triggered cancellations of their health insurance policies.Faced with public ...

The federal deficit is a huge public policy problem that must be understood, confronted, and solved. Federal deficits run in these last five years dwarf any precedent in U.S. post-world-war history. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)’s latest projections warn that without legislative corrections, deficits will rise to untenable levels ...

If the law isn't scaled back by 2014, we're ruined. Throughout 2009 and early 2010, supporters of the then-pending Affordable Care Act (ACA) argued that health-care reform was necessary to repair the federal government’s untenable fiscal outlook. More than any other factor, it was said, health-care cost inflation was the driving force ...