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Presidential Candidates Avoiding What Matters Most To Voters

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JOHN HERBERT From Where I Sit

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 18, 2008

Judging by recent election campaign coverage, the future of the U.S. presidency could be decided by how convincingly Sen. Hillary Clinton can chug-a-lug a boilermaker in a Pennsylvania barroom or survive under an alleged hail of Bosnian sniper fire.

Give me a break. Those teaser-headlines are about as ridiculous as questioning how to interpret the meaning of the word "is." Oh, sorry. That's already been done, 10 years ago, by one President Bill Clinton.

Still, the campaign thus far has avoided any debate, by any of the candidates, on issues that should really matter to voters: How on earth are we as a nation going to guarantee the solvency f Medicare and Social Security?

Sure, the three candidates who remain standing six months before the main event have paid lip service to some key issues. We know who would stay in Iraq and who would retreat.

It's no secret that we face severe economic tests and that one candidate would lower taxes and two would hike them as part of the cure.

The nation is worried that we are running out of affordable energy. Each candidate has his or her own approach to the energy issue, but none of them has made much noise about how they plan to tackle Alaskan or off shore oil, for example, or wind farms.

Illegal immigration was a campaign issue early on, but we rarely hear about it now. Maybe the dollar is so weak that our economy no longer attracts illegal immigrants.

No one has seriously debated the question of whether we want an impeached (but not convicted) Bill Clinton back "living it up" in the White House, stains and all.

An estimated 80 million Americans, the so-called "baby boomers," were born between 1946 and 1964. Every day, some 10,000 of them start collecting what they've been told they are entitled to, their Social Security retirement benefits.

The baby-boomer payouts have been going on for about a year, now. In another three or four years, current payroll taxes will not be sufficient to cover Social Security. By 2041, Social Security trust funds will also dry up. The feds will theoretically be able to pay only 78 cents on every dollar of earned retirement benefits.

"No worry," you may think. "The feds will always find a way to bail us out." President Bush thought so, too, a few years ago. But Congress wouldn't buy his ideas. We may, rather, face higher taxes to correct the potential deficit. By how much, and what are the alternatives? That's what the candidates should be ventilating at this point.

Instead, voters have one candidate who admits he doesn't really fathom economic issues, and two others who represent a party whose solution to any challenge is to tax and spend.

The future of Medicare, our other major entitlement program besides Social Security, is no rosier. The part of the Medicare trust funds that covers our hospital stay as seniors is estimated to run out of money by 2019 if we don't start fixing things right away.

If we put off financing either Medicare or Social Security improvements, the outlook will be even more grim - and the tax penalty even stiffer.

A new president will only have a few months to make recommendations on how to secure future Medicare financing. We should be able to share in these plans before we cast our vote.

Instead, we seem to be hung up on such questions as whether Hillary "misspoke" or "lied," whether Barack Hussein Obama is patriotic enough or may have worshipped with an overly excited minister, and whether long in the tooth John McCain was an alleged school hellion.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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