Gene Steuerle holds forth on the very undemocratic impact of our generation's promises to ourselves on the tax burden of the next:

At its core, democracy is about equal rights to vote—and have your representatives vote—on the nation's current priorities. But many recent laws attempt to deny us—and, even more so, our children—the opportunity to determine those priorities.

The reason is simple, but its effects are profound. Never before in U.S. history have so many promises been made to so many people for so many years into the future. Every additional promise, no matter what its merit, only attempts to tie that fiscal straightjacket tighter around future voters.

If our tax laws merely stay the same from 2006 to 2010, for instance, government revenues would rise by several hundred billion dollars. But guess what? Most of those revenue increases are already committed, mainly to the growing costs of our current health and retirement programs.

The Congressional Budget Office is to be commended for calling attention to a disturbing trend in life expectancy disparities between the rich and the poor that could have strong budgetary effects for Social Security and Medicare.

Here is the summary from CBO's analysis.

Congressional Budget Office 4/17/08

Growing Disparities in Life Expectancy

Yesterday, the Treasury released its fourth in a series of issue briefs on reforming Social Security.  As the title indicates, this one was focused on making sure that Social Security surpluses are used to increase the ability of future generations of taxpayers to support the benefits claimed by future retirees.  It uses the LMS plan as an illustration and emphasizes the constructive role that personal accounts can play in safeguarding Social Security funds for Social Security benefits.

Here's an excerpt of the discussion about pre-funding future benefits, with my emphasis added:

Glenn Hubbard's and John Cogan's Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning seems persuasive until you consider that their premise is wrong, their math is misleading, and they fail to explain the real reason federal revenues have risen as a share of gross domestic product over the past 25 years.

First the wrong premise -- Hardly anyone is proposing to allow the 2001 and 2003 marginal tax rate cuts, marriage penalty relief, or child tax credit to expire in 2010. Senators Obama and Clinton have repeatedly promised to extend those tax cuts for all but the very wealthy. Senator Clinton defined wealthy as those making over $250,000 a year.

Second, Hubbard and Cogan examine only the past 25 years, starting in fiscal year 1983, when President Reagan's tax cuts first took full effect, driving federal revenues down to 17.5% of GDP from 19.6% when he took office in 1981.

Stan doesn't think his "Fiscal Fitness" column was choreographed to coincide with the Hubbard/Cogan op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal.  But a smart guy like Stan can always rely on a ready foil on the WSJ editorial page.

I object to many parts of the op-ed, but two in particular. 

I agree with my partners in crime--Congress and the President should be able to conduct responsible budget policies even without putting any of it on autopilot.  But they don't conduct responsible budget policies, and, more importantly, we don't hold them accountable for this at election time, and so I think some type of automatic trigger could work. 

Stan wonders what sustainable means in the context of long-term entitlement reforms.  We could start (and probably end) with the definition of "sustainable solvency" in the 2008 Social Security Trustees Report:

When a program has positive trust fund ratios throughout the 75-year projec­tion period and these ratios are stable or rising at the end of the period, the program financing is said to achieve sustainable solvency.

Via the Real Time Economics blog, here is a link to a paper by the Brookings-Heritage Fiscal Seminar that recommends that: 

• Congress and the president enact explicit long-term budgets for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that are sustainable, set limits on automatic spending growth, and reduce the relatively favorable budgetary treatment of these programs compared with other types of expenditures.
• The programs be reviewed on a regular schedule by the Social Security and Medicare Trustees or the Congressional Budget Office to determine whether they will remain within budgeted amounts.
• Significant long-term deviations from budgeted amounts trigger automatic adjustments in benefits, premiums, provider payments, or other revenues. These adjustments could only be over-ridden by an explicit vote of Congress and acceptance by the president.

Paul Krugman correctly points out the flaws with an argument of the form, "there is no trust fund, so the system will be in crisis in 2017."  But his response is not a good argument against reforming the system now.

Brad DeLong linked to my post on Social Security yesterday, which set off the usual round of criticisms of a non-liberal's views of Social Security and its reform in the comment section.  Here's a summary and the next installment in the conversation.