The Virginian-Pilot
© February 21, 2011

Living on borrowed time

Re 'Cuts not slashes,' front page, Feb. 15: Reading about the federal budget was like getting hit upside the head with a tire iron. The administration plans to spend $3.7 trillion, with projected revenues of only $2.6 trillion.

Really?

If one were to apply this strange math to a typical Hampton Roads family, it would be hard to explain how a family earning $80,000 per year could possibly survive while spending $114,000. Anyone able to understand budgeting knows this will result in bankruptcy for the family and, inevitably, for the nation as well.

So what can be done?

The biggest slices of the spending pie are entitlements. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid eat up 41 percent of the federal budget. So it stands to reason that our politicians should be talking about entitlement reform, right?

Wrong!

Even though a family spending $114k (while earning only $80k) will walk a short road to bankruptcy, it appears that most of our politicians can't apply the same reasoning. It's time to increase the Social Security retirement age and apply means testing to qualify needful beneficiaries.

Perhaps it's not fair for a person to pay more than 15 percent of what he earns over the course of his life and then get nothing in return, but the reality is that disability insurance, survivor benefits and a lifetime-income-safety-net have untold value. It's kind of like car insurance for someone who never has an accident.

We must have entitlement reform before we bankrupt our country. Our politicians surely must know this.

David Beemer
Virginia Beach