10 Truths About Entitlements

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched a new initiative on entitlement reform, highlighting the growing costs of entitlement programs and pushing the need to fix Social Security and Medicare promptly.

Their whole page is worth checking out, especially for more details on these 10 truths about entitlements:

Truth #1: Entitlement programs are huge, expensive, and reach into every corner of American life. 

Truth #2: Entitlement programs are not self-funding and are a main driver of deficits.

Truth #3: Entitlement costs are growing at an alarming rate.

Truth #4: Longer life expectancies, changing demographics, and soaring costs explain why entitlements as we know them today are unsustainable.

Truth #5: Not a single major entitlement program is projected to be financially solvent 20 years from now.

Truth #6: The cost to make these programs financially solvent for the next 75 years is almost $40 trillion.

Truth #7: Mandatory spending—entitlement programs and interest on the debt—are already squeezing out important investments in other essential programs.

Truth #8: We have nothing to fear from carefully crafted, phased-in adjustments to our entitlement programs.

Truth #9: We can reform entitlements without baseline cuts and without breaking our commitment to the nation’s seniors, disabled, and poor.

Truth #10: The biggest threat imaginable to Medicare or Social Security as we know them will be if we do nothing at all.