United States Senator

Today’s seniors have worked to keep their promises to America and America must keep its promises to them. Our Social Security system is an important promise to seniors, but unfortunately, it is on the verge of collapse. We must act now to avoid a catastrophe in the future.

Due to our aging society and increased life expectancy, our current Social Security system is facing a funding crisis that will require large tax increases, huge benefit cuts, massive government borrowing or a combination of all three. With the impending retirement of “baby-boomers,” we must act now if we are to ensure that this vital program will be solvent for future retirees.

Many people believe that the current Social Security Trust Fund is a real pension fund where individual contributions are saved and invested for their retirement. This is not true. Social Security was not established to be a fully funded pension program and therefore contains no real assets. The system operates essentially on a “pay-as-you-go” basis where today’s workers pay taxes to support today’s retired beneficiaries knowing that the generation that follows them will do the same. This worked well when there were 40 workers for every retiree, but today there are only three workers for every retiree.

Some politicians would like to pretend there is no problem and instead talk about a “Social Security surplus,” but the truth is, these funds are given to the Treasury Department and spent on other government programs. But when the government “borrows” from itself, it has not purchased anything of real value, instead, just adding to a filing cabinet full of IOU’s.

American retirees and taxpayers deserve better than this accounting shell game. Sen. Jim DeMint believes that the first step toward protecting Social Security is to “Stop the Raid” and ensure that Social Security tax dollars are only used to pay workers’ hard-earned retirement benefits and not for other government programs. For the last three years, Sen. DeMint has offered a “Stop the Raid” amendment to the annual Budget Resolution. Sadly, this year, only 41 senators had the courage to vote to support America's seniors and to stop using the surplus as a secret slush fund. DeMint is committed to this principle and will continue to offer this amendment until the Congress decides to put seniors ahead of funding unnecessary government programs.

DeMint also believes that we must address the fact that we are not currently providing workers with real ownership of the money they pay into the system and wealth is never allowed to be accumulated and passed on to children or grandchildren. The answer to this: personal Social Security savings accounts. These accounts would give younger workers the opportunity to build wealth and control their futures so that when they retire they will not have to live month-to-month relying on the government for a check. Personal Social Security savings accounts will make every American a saver and an investor.

Lastly, since its creation over 40 years ago, Medicare has served as the cornerstone on which all other government health programs rest. Unfortunately, the deteriorating financial conditions of this program are threatening beneficiary access to its benefits. In fact, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees' report of 2008 found the trust fund that finances virtually all Medicare initiatives will be insolvent by the year 2019. This means the total cost of Medicare expenditures will be less than the entire value of the Medicare trust fund. At the same time, other government health programs are growing at unsustainable rates and threatening to overrun many state budgets. If left unreformed, these health care costs will impose a crushing financial burden on our economy and fail in their promise to provide core benefits to those in the most need. One of the most important issues for Congress to focus on is managing the skyrocketing costs of health care and setting the Medicare program back on the path of long-term fiscal sustainability.

DeMint believes that an essential part of improving quality while reducing overall costs involves remodeling the Medicare program to fit the needs of the beneficiary. Like in other areas of health reform, the senator has been working in Congress to keep the government out of the doctor’s office and allow seniors and their doctors the freedom to decide what is best. While these steps are a good first start, more needs to be done to reign in out of control spending while ensuring seniors have access to the services they need.

The greatest challenge facing Medicare is keeping the program from going bankrupt. Soon the 77 million baby boomers will approach retirement, putting enormous pressure on the Medicare trust fund. Actuaries estimate that in 2010, four years from now, Medicare will become insolvent -- meaning the Medicare trust fund will no longer be bringing in enough taxes to cover the benefits it’s paying out.

DeMint believes that legislation focused on giving individuals control over how to spend their health care dollars will not only not only reign in explosive health care costs, but will allow for increased access to more personalized and efficient care.

Each passing year that we refuse to address these problems makes the solution more and more expensive. We must recognize the tremendous opportunity we have to modernize essential government programs like Medicare and Social Security and truly protect benefits to current and future retirees.

We cannot hand the next generation a broken promise that forces them to accept higher taxes, crushing benefit cuts and crippling debt. From the Greatest Generation to Generation Y, Americans must know that their government will keep the promises it has made.