American taxpayers now spend more on Social Security and Medicare than on the entire federal budget in 2005.

Read that again.

Here are the numbers: The 2005 federal budget was roughly $2.4 trillion. This year, Social Security will pay out approximately $1.5 trillion in benefits to 68 million recipients, which is much higher after Joe Biden’s inflation drove large cost-of-living adjustments in those payments, and Medicare will cost about $900 billion for nearly 67 million people. Both programs will cost more than servicing the debt ($890 billion) and the constitutional directive of national defense ($850 billion).

In 2005, the federal debt was $7.9 trillion. It’s now $34.5 trillion. And Biden wants to spend $7.3 trillion — almost the entire debt 19 years ago.

From time to time, we warn about Social Security and Medicare becoming insolvent and why that’s happening. In short, when Social Security was launched, there were 16 workers for every retiree. Today, there are three, and it will soon be two. Similar ratios apply to Medicare.

To put it mildly, those numbers are unsustainable.

We and millions of others use the word “entitlements” to describe these behemoth and constitutionally dubious programs, but we also occasionally hear from retirees who are understandably angry at the use of that word. “Entitlement” sounds like welfare, they rightly note, not the program they paid into for their working careers and are now, er, entitled to a return.

We get it. Earned entitlements are not the same as unearned entitlements. But no one is talking about cutting current benefits, even though these programs still cost today’s taxpayers. There is no trust fund or lockbox full of money with your name on it. Social Security, in particular, is a Ponzi scheme.

All of that brings us to the political debate winding up for this election year.

In Biden’s State of the Union, he issued a warning to fire up his base: “Many of my friends on the other side of the aisle want to put Social Security on the chopping block. If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop you.” If you thought that sounded familiar, it’s because he said almost exactly the same thing last year. Such repetition happens a lot with him.

Raising the retirement age might be the only way to save the programs, but virtually no one in the Swamp has the appetite for that battle. They’d rather demagogue the issue and scare seniors while doing nothing to save the programs for future generations.

In any case, no matter how many times Donald Trump has vowed not to touch the programs, his opponents still want to portray him as Paul Ryan pushing grandma off the cliff. They redoubled those efforts when he said this week, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.”

At least that’s the convenient cut they shared.

His full comment continued, “and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements.” He later added, “I know that they’re going to end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak.”

If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste. https://t.co/q4Ng9U3iTP pic.twitter.com/yEZxuV2U5q

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 11, 2024

Democrats don’t worry about the facts; there’s an election to win.

“If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age again, I will stop them,” Biden repeated at a campaign stop on Monday. “Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table again.”

Biden campaign communications director Josh Marcus-Blank insisted, “The attacks on Social Security and Medicare aren’t abstract for seniors — they’re a legitimate threat to their livelihoods.”

Hillary Clinton couldn’t pass up an opportunity for a dig, either. “Have seniors in your life?” she posted on X with the cut video of Trump’s comment. “They should see this.”

Respected policy analyst Whoopi Goldberg went even further in her rebuttal to Trump on “The View,” aimed at her suburban women audience: “Yeah, we could put you in jail for all your entitlements.” Leftists do love the idea of “saving democracy” by jailing their political opponents.

Democrats routinely throw around the word “denier” when it comes to climate change or elections, yet they are the ones denying reality. We might call them entitlement deniers. By denying there’s a crisis of sustainability for earned entitlements, they are effectively denying current workers and future generations the return on these programs.

Speaking of 2005, that was the year Democrats denied taxpayers the right to invest their own money in the stock market rather than have it confiscated through payroll taxes and distributed to current retirees. How did sinking George W. Bush’s plan work out for seniors? “The average worker would have three times more retirement income if they were able to keep and invest their Social Security taxes,” reports The Heritage Foundation. “Even the lowest-income workers would have 40% more retirement income.”

Have seniors in your life? They should see that.

Indeed, the question Grandma should be asking is not whether someone’s going to push her off a cliff but whether politicians who refuse to do anything about budget-consuming entitlements are pushing her grandchildren off the cliff.