Ed Feulner
is happy to be a grandpa to Elizabeth Jane Feulner, who was born on
July 29.
But, as The
Heritage Foundation president writes in an , "I can't ignore a dark cloud that's hanging over
Elizabeth and the members of her generation."
That cloud?
Proposals to add prescription drugs to Medicare as an entitlement
that Congress could approve and President Bush could sign into
law.
Here is
Feulner's problem: Should the proposals become law, babies just
like Elizabeth would inherit, when they're 27, an extra tax burden
average $1,125 per household.
That's just for
the drug entitlement many lawmakers want. It doesn't cover the
deficits Medicare already has. That will cost Elizabeth and her
contemporaries roughly an extra $2,855.
Then there's the
15.3 percent Medicare payroll tax. Not to mention other taxes the
government needs to pay for things the Constitution actually calls
for, like defense.
Plus, these
taxes will rise over the next 40 years, which means "Elizabeth will
be so busy paying for everyone else's retirement, she won't be able
to save up enough money for her own," Feulner writes.
Feulner is 62
years old, has a Ph.D. and runs one of America's most prominent
think tanks. But you don't need all that credibility to know
these Medicare proposals are a bad idea that will sentence your
grandchildren to a lifetime of high taxes and deferred
dreams.
Read more of
and Heritage's Medicare research at Heritage.org.