Elderly Entitlements Made the Middle Class

Walter Russell Mead, a member of NPQ's editorial advisory board, is author of Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition.

New York - In all the budget brouhaha emanating from Washington, one fact has been overlooked: the effect or cutting Washington's budgets on family budgets around the nation. The plans currently on the table to cut the federal deficit will not make the deficit go away; rather, the budget plans transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink from the public to the private sector. Washington's budgets may balance if these plans go through. But the family budgets of millions of people in the American middle class won't.

back to index