RUSH: This is in USA Today: ‘The cost of government benefits for seniors soared to a record $27,289 per senior in 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis. That’s a 24% increase above the inflation rate since 2000. Medical costs are the biggest reason. Last year, for the first time, health care and nursing homes cost the government more than Social Security payments for seniors age 65 and older. The average Social Security benefit per senior in 2007 was $13,184. ‘We have a health care crisis. We don’t have an entitlement crisis,’ says David Certner, legislative policy director of the AARP, which represents seniors.’ What the hell is that? We have a health care crisis, not an entitlement crisis? Here are the numbers for all of you weenies out there, ‘We need to get out of Iraq, Mr. Limbaugh, so we can spend money on education and on health care for our children.’ The cost of government benefits for seniors, $27,289 per person in 2007. ‘The federal government spent $952 billion in 2007 on elderly benefits, up from $601 billion in 2000. It’s the biggest function of the federal government.’ It’s the biggest function of the federal government, senior care!
Nothing against you seniors, we’re all going to be there someday. But it is what it is. ‘States chipped in $27 billion more in 2007, mostly for nursing homes.’ Now, who was it that tried to do something about this back in 2005? It was George W. Bush. He wanted to reform Social Security, and he wanted to do it in the private sector, private accounts and so forth. It was a great, courageous idea. It’s going to have to be done at some point but of course there’s this word called ‘security,’ and people think security means it’s always going to be there, Social Security. You couple that, say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have private accounts, let you invest your money.’ Investment equals what? Not security. To a lot of people it equals risk. Any time you have a market fluctuation, correction, goes down, the opponents of privatization say, ‘That’s your Social Security money that’s being lost there if you put it into private accounts.’ But regardless, this is escalating. This cost to provide benefits of all kinds to senior citizens, most of whom are not working, this expense is rising faster than people know or projected. Something is going to have to be done about it. It is a crisis.
Thirty-five percent of the federal budget is spent on benefits for senior citizens. It was 32% in 2004. Thirty-five percent. The cost, if you’re not a seasoned citizen, ‘The cost of senior benefits is equal to $10,673 for every non-senior household.’ And this is only going to get worse. The Boomers are just starting to join that group known as the seniors, known as the seasoned citizens on this program, and there are a lot of those Boomers. This is liberalism. This is the result of unchecked, uncontrolled liberalism, which contains many elements. One of the most insidious elements is liberalism poisoning the minds of people into believing that because they are Americans they are entitled to be taken care of by other Americans. This whole entitlement mentality, this dependent mentality — I know this is angering some of you seniors. I don’t mean to be doing that. You were playing along according to the rules when you were growing up, I understand that, but at some point it’s just like the automobile companies cannot sustain it anymore. They can’t continue to pay health care, retirement, and pensions for people no longer working for them. So what, they look to the government to take it over, the government takes a portion of it over. You talk about the math, they’re trying to figure out the delegates in the Democrats, the math of this does not work out unless something about this is changed, because the tax rates necessary to support this kind of thing are going to be so prohibitive, nobody is going to bother to work if nothing happens on this. This is culturally destructive.