The Trillion Dollar Surprise in the Budget Deal

The most significant federal entitlement reform in our lifetime was a little noticed provision that Democrats included in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The provision garnered almost no attention from the mainstream media or even from most conservative commentators. Yet according to the Medicare Trustees report that followed, this one provision eliminated $52 trillion of unfunded federal government liability – an amount that was more than three times the size of the US economy.

Here is a second surprise, one that has also been almost completely ignored. In last week’s bi-partisan budget agreement, Republican members of Congress agreed to completely undo the Democrat’s reform – recommitting the federal government to trillions of dollars of entitlement spending for which there are no dedicated future revenues.