By: Russ Kamp, Managing Director, Ryan ALM, Inc.

I initially posted most of these thoughts directly on LinkedIn.com yesterday, but the message seems to have struck a chord with a good number of my contacts. Glad to see that we are of a similar mindset. Putting this out on my blog is one way to record my thoughts (I’ve now published 1,509 posts) and refer back when appropriate to do so. Here is yesterday’s post.

I received an email from Seeking Alpha this morning that discussed priorities under the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with the mandate to “cut the federal government down to size.” They began with the following, “the hardest area to tackle has been popular (my emphasis) entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security,…”

I don’t know about you, but to describe Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as “popular” really irked me. These are essential, and often lifesaving, programs counted on by millions of Americans, who, more often than not, have no other place to turn for support. The use of the word “popular” puts these in the same category as my favorite soda, film, song, sports team, etc.

The US enjoys the benefit of a fiat currency and the ability to deficit spend. That “deficit” is an asset of the private sector. The concern should be the enhanced demand for goods and services that is created by this stimulus and not the level of debt. I produced a post on August 24, 2024, called “Social Security and the Misplaced Scare Mongering” in which I wrote it is a fallacy to believe that there exists an “operational constraint on the government’s ability to meet all Social Security payments.”

According to the SSA, 70.6 million Americans are receiving some form of support. I’m sure that most feel that they’ve earned this benefit. Just as I’m sure that workers in the multiemployer plans supported by the ARPA/SFA also feel that they earned the right to collect a monthly pension benefit that was promised. When the private sector isn’t doing enough for Americans, thank God that we have a federal government with the capacity to support us.

Let us NOT compound our daily financial challenges by misunderstanding how our monetary system truly works. Americans deserve much better.