Entitlement Issues in the Domestic Budget: The Long-term Agenda

The essays in this volume analyze the entitlement programs responsible for more than two-thirds of all federal outlays, exclusive of interest on debt. Rather than dealing with the level of current outlays in the current budget as most other discussions do, the authors focus on fundamental inequities and problems likely to emerge over the long term. The papers in this volume address the following topics: Michael D. Levy discusses social security, stressing the problems created by the present federal income tax treatment of benefits. Jack Meyer examines Medicare and Medicaid, noting that they are expensive programs that yet fail to provide adequate coverage in important respects. Annelise Anderson reviews federal pay and civil service retirement, concluding that federal workers are both overpaid and underpaid and that the overpayment of many workers is combined with an extremely generous retirement system. Kenneth Clarkson describes low-income benefit programs, emphasizing the problem of multiple benefits for individual households. The volume also includes an edited discussion among the authors and other participants at the conference.