Political Quotes

“this is a good budget we passed out of this House and sent to conference. I am hoping that the kind of frugal budget that we sent to conference is going to come back to this House for a final budget of the House and the Senate. One thing that the budget did not deal with is unfunded liabilities. Unfunded liabilities are the promises that politicians make when they do not know where the money is coming from in later years. Last week, the actuaries of the Social Security Administration and the Medicare trust fund came up with their estimates of unfunded liabilities, and that is what this chart shows. It should scare the heck out of us. The Social Security and Medicare trustees have calculated that these programs have $73.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Now, if you divide the population of the United States, which is roughly 290 million, into that $73.5 trillion, you end up with over a quarter of a million dollars for every man, woman and child that somehow is going to be responsible for paying for these benefits over and above what we have promised because the money coming in from the FICA tax, and that FICA tax supports Social Security and Medicare, over and above the money coming in in revenues from that tax, we are still short $73.5 trillion.”