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The Economy and the Federal Budget |
CED believes that the primary cause of America's long-term federal budget problem is the acceleration of entitlement spending. The government's health care programs - Medicare, Medicaid, and other smaller programs including coverage of federal retirees - are the most costly entitlements. Thus, health care reform must extend beyond the private-sector employer-based system - which nonetheless is the essential place to start - to the federal government's programs. Social Security is the other major entitlement problem area, flowing from the same phenomena of the retirement of the baby-boom generation and the more general lengthening of life spans and decline in fertility. CED was an early leader in non-ideological thinking on how to balance the needs and expectations of the old and the young and how to blend private investment with a guaranteed retirement income that would protect the most vulnerable from the costs of greater longevity and inflation. The nation needs to consider such sound policy alternatives as the long-term budget crisis, and the retirement of the baby boom, come ever closer.
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