Entitlement Reform: A Growing National Emergency

As our debt soars above $22 trillion and continues to grow, Democrats are seeking yet another deal to bust discretionary spending caps. However, politicians on both sides of the aisle are ignoring — as has become routine — the true drivers of our debt crisis: mandatory spending.

Programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other welfare programs whose spending runs on autopilot every year are bankrupting our nation. As we keep spending money that we don’t have, we drive ourselves to spend more on interest from this borrowing as well.

By 2028, we will spend more annually on financing our massive national debt than we do on our entire defense budget. This is unacceptable, especially considering that the national debt also simultaneously poses the single largest threat to our national security. This is the security threat we need to be fighting, and it cannot be done without reforming entitlements.

Those in Congress need to do the job they swore to do and “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Although it is very unpopular to talk about, doing this job undoubtedly includes reforming entitlements and slowing, if not cutting, our rates of spending on these programs.

Fortunately, some principled politicians are willing to be the ones to start and drive this narrative. We are lucky to have many of them as partners with FreedomWorks, the most recent product of which is our new booklet, Entitlement Reform: A Growing National Emergency. Through taking this problem seriously, it can be addressed, but the fight to make it happen rages on.

[Join us]((http://www.freedomworks.org/content/entitlement-reform-growing-national-emergency) for a lunch discussion about this issue on April 30th at 12 PM at the Conservative Partnership Institute (300 Independence Avenue SE).