The High Cost of Good Intentions

This historical overview of federal entitlement programs explains how in 2015 more than half of all households in the United States—more than 170 million people—received assistance from a federal entitlement program. Although entitlement programs date from the Revolutionary War, their period of greatest growth came after 1946. Milestones along the way included civil war pensions, the Social Security Act (1935), and the Social Security Amendments of 1965 that created Medicare and Medicaid. Partisan politics explain only part of this history. For example, Dwight D. Eisenhower presided, if somewhat reluctantly, over the creation of Social Security Disability Insurance in 1956. Entitlement programs seemed to have a politics all their own. Their basic dynamic is this: “the creation of entitlement brings forth relentless forces that cause them to inexorably expand” (p. 4). Time and time again, budget surpluses lured Congressmen into expanding existing programs. Budget deficits, by way of contrast, failed to arrest the growth of the programs. Instead, incremental expansions took place such as when Congress removed the age barrier that restricted social security disability benefits to people over fifty. The trust funds that were typical of modern social insurance programs also aided program growth by allowing the federal budget to be in deficit and the trust fund to be in surplus. Hence, programs could be expanded in times of budget deficit

Disability insurance · Economics · Entitlement (fair division · Federal budget · Fiscal year · Health care · Medicaid · New Deal · Political science · Politics · Social security · Social Security Act · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Public Administration