Yes, the money will run out

Most Americans probably have never heard of the town of Prichard, Ala., just outside Mobile. But little Prichard has a lesson for our federal government.

Here's why.

Back in 2004, Prichard hired an actuary to look over its finances. The actuary issued a stark warning: The town was going to run out of money for its pension plan for retired city employees in five years.

He certainly wasn't joking. 2009 arrived, and like clockwork, Prichard's pension plan went belly-up. The money wasn't in the city's accounts to pay retirees what they were owed. In the years after they received the warning from the actuary, Prichard's elected officials had refused to make the spending cuts necessary to shore up the town's finances. As a result, Prichard simply stopped sending out monthly pension checks to retirees.

Without their pensions, some retirees have had to go back to work to avoid losing their homes. Some have filed for bankruptcy protection. Others are having to depend on the proceeds of charitable bake sales to make ends meet.

If any of this sounds familiar on the national level, it should.

Both Medicare and Social Security are on a path to bankruptcy. Medicare may well go broke before the decade is out, though Social Security is expected to hang on some years longer.

That is not news. We've been warned about it for years on end, and the warnings are still pouring in. The massive programs cannot survive without serious reform.

But Republican proposals to reform Medicare in particular are being stonewalled by congressional Democrats - who are not even bothering to offer an alternative proposal that has any realistic possibility of staving off bankruptcy for Medicare.

In fact, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said candidly on CBS' "Face the Nation," "I could never support any arrangement that reduced benefits for Medicare - absolutely not."

Well, can she support the existing "arrangement" - which has Medicare set to go broke in a few years? Doesn't she know that benefits will be "reduced" then - to say the least? Wouldn't we be far better off to reform both Medicare and Social Security now in ways that might cause some discomfort but that would at least salvage the programs?

Back in Prichard, Ala., a member of the City Council lamented that the city should have done more to avoid financial meltdown.

"I'm not certain we really gave our all to prevent this," he told The New York Times.

Do you believe that our leaders in Congress and the White House today are "giving their all" to prevent similar catastrophe at the national level?

Upcoming Events