Both Parties Looking to Take it Out on the Old People

And I'm not just talking death panels here, I'm talking Social Security retirement:

In a rare departure from this year's intense political posturing over the soaring budget deficit, House leaders of both parties recently signaled that they are prepared to tackle a leading long-term liability — Social Security — by raising the retirement age.

Politicians often talk in generalities about cutting the deficit, but discussing specifics about how Congress may curb the growth of the biggest and most popular programs such as Social Security and defense is controversial and usually taboo in an election year.

But lessons learned from the debt crisis in Europe and worries that the U.S. could soon confront its own debt crisis, with annual deficits projected at about $1 trillion for years to come, may have prompted the unusually frank comments by House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, and House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

Speaking in unrelated forums, both leaders stressed that with people living longer and enjoying better health in their senior years, the nation simply can't afford any longer to be paying out benefits for as long as 30 years after retirement.

"We need to look at the American people and explain to them that we're broke," Mr. Boehner said in an interview last week with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Besides raising the retirement age for full Social Security benefits to 70 for people now 50 or younger, Mr. Boehner suggested curbing benefit growth by tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than growth in wages, and providing benefits only to those who need them.

"If you have substantial non-Social Security income while you're retired, why are we paying you at a time when we're broke?" he said. "We just need to be honest with people."

You are paying them because for decades they paid into the system expecting the government's promise would be kept, but instead the government stole that Social Security money from the trust funds and used it for other spending. Now that the generational theft is beginning to hit home, suddenly it's up to the earners to give up their share of the proceeds to fix a problem they did not cause.

It is true that people generally live longer these days, and that means paying out Social Security benefits for many years longer than the system anticipated.  Thanks to our old health care system people can expect longer, healthier lives, though that will end with Obamacare.  Government health care will probably ensure the mortality rates return to where they were 40 or 50 years ago and people will start dying off at ages that better suit the government's programs.

Hope.  Change.