Speak Up Memo

The Voice of Young Conservatives THE WEEK OF FEB. 15, 2010

The Outrage

Used and forgotten. In 2008, young people gave Democrats their vote and in 2009Democrats showed young people the door. Well it’s time to tell the Democrats to stopand listen up. From health care to student loan reform, Democratic policies haveconsistently ignored the needs of our generation. If we want change, 2010 must bedi

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erent.

What You Can Do About It

Speak up! As a conservative we must begin to win hearts and minds before we can winelections. The process starts by educating people about what we truly believe. It starts with you in the classroom.

When your friend tells you they voted for Obama, speak up. When you hear someonesaying that Republicans don’t have the answers, speak up. If a professor lectures you onthe need for government health care, speak up.

We’ll arm you with the facts you need to win the argument. It’s your job to carry themessage on to your campus. It’s your job to speak up! By engaging ourselves in thedebate, we’ll spread the message of conservatism – the message of small government,fiscal responsibility, and individual rights – to one campus, one classroom, and onestudent at a time.Over the next five weeks the CRNC will be looking into the growing entitlements that left unreformed will doom this country’s fiscal future. We must realize that government isnot the solution to the problem…it IS the problem.

This Week’s Theme: Medicaid

The Promise: "What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at theend of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further," he said. "We have to signalseriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch,not someone else's.”

The Reality: We’re kicking the can down the road. Obama’s budget does nothing toreform a Medicare entitlement that will create huge deficits for the foreseeable future.Rather than seek fundamental reforms the White House budget proposal actually proposes major increases in Medicare spending.Fact 1:Medicare Entitlement Spending Threatens to Bankrupt Our GenerationCurrently the federal government spends 21.7% of the national budget on two major health entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid, which represents 15.2% of the nation’sGDP. If the status quo continues unaltered, these two programs will consume 20% of GDP by 2016. When President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law has said, “No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their ownhopes, eaten away simply becausethey are c arrying out deep moralobligations to their parents.” But as Congressman Paul Ryan wrote, “Absent reform, the program will end up delivering exactly what it wascreatedto avoid: it will consume the prosperity of today’s younger generation to finance an unsustainable path of spending” Read More:http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/plan/ challenges.htm Fact 2:What’s Worse? Insolvency Looms The Medicare program is simply going bankrupt . Trustees for Social Security andMedicare, the government’s two biggest benefit programs, have issued a new report saying that the Medicare will pay out more benefits than it collects and will be insolvent by 2017. That’s only 7 years from now. The reason (in addition to waste and fraud) hasbeen Medicare’s inability to control costs. A 2007 report by the Congressional Budget O

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ce found that total spending per Medicare enrollee grew at 10.6% annually while theprivately insured grew at 7.7%. Moreover the report predicts, “In the absence of an unprecedented change in the long term trends,national spending on health care will grow substantially over the coming decades.” Democrats so far have proposed nothing resembling fundamental change. Rather thanfocus on the spending side of the equation, to reign in bloated government programs.they have emphasized the tax side of the formula by letting the Bush tax cuts expire.Eventually we will come to a point where increasing taxes simply is not an option. What then Mr. President?