Think Tanks Should Address Issue Of Aging Baby Boomers, Effect On Budget, Opinion Piece Says

August 4, 2007 – 11:25 am | posted in Seniors / Aging

The “major presidential candidates — Republican and Democratic — are dodging one of the thorniest problems they would face if elected: the huge budget costs of aging baby boomers” for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and “Washington’s vaunted think tanks — citadels for public intellectuals both liberal and conservative” — also have “tiptoed around the problem,” columnist Robert Samuelson writes in a Washington Post opinion piece. He writes, “Ideally, think tanks expand the public conversation by saying things too controversial for politicians to say on their own. Here, they’ve abdicated that role.”

According to Samuelson, think tanks have “evaded” the “larger questions of adjusting to an aging society” because “honesty” on the issue “might be deeply embarrassing.” A discussion of the issue might require liberals to “concede that government could grow too large and that spending and benefit cuts are needed” and might require conservatives to “concede that, even with plausible benefit and spending cuts, tomorrow’s government would be bigger than today’s,” Samuelson writes.

He proposes that “some public-spirited sugar daddy … sponsor a short book” that would invite six think tanks, “three liberal — the Brookings Institution, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Urban Institute — and three conservative — the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation” — to discuss the issue. In the book, Samuelson writes, after “an introduction describing America’s aging, each think tank would receive 35 pages to respond to questions and to present its vision.” The book “would force think tanks to compete,” he writes, adding, “They’d have to make their vision of the future explicit within the untidy framework of government’s past commitments. It would illuminate the connections between defense spending, retirement benefits, health care, economic growth and much more” (Samuelson, Washington Post, 8/1).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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