Political Quotes

“Mr. President, earlier this week I outlined four main topics that I hoped to hear the President discuss in his State of the Union Address. Today, I would like to talk in more detail about one of those items and perhaps the most challenging--restructuring Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to preserve them for current and future generations. In Washington, these three programs fall into the category of mandatory spending, meaning they are not contingent on annual congressional review or funding. Instead, they are based on formulas that have already been written into law, and therefore this spending occurs automatically, as if it is on autopilot. So, anyone who becomes eligible for the program based on the requirements in the law automatically qualifies for the benefits. We do not have the ability on a year-to-year basis to review or change this. We can only make structural changes and reforms to the program as necessary. Today these items make up a majority of the government's annual budget. This is because when these programs were implemented they did not take into account the remarkable and wonderful increase in the lifespan of Americans, nor the impact of the post-World War II baby boom generation reaching the point of retirement age, which is now at the level of about 10,000 retirements each and every day of the year. That is putting an enormous strain on the overall budget and the amount in proportion to the budget that goes for funding these mandatory programs.…”