But last week an array of numbers-in his new budget and in a study of his healthcare plan-underscored something more important about his generational role. He needs to talk bluntly to the American family about its finances: to tell seniors – and his fellow boomers – that they must stop shifting fiscal burdens onto children and the unborn. Ending generational selfishness would redeem a watchword of his administration: responsibility. But it’s not an agenda that presidents (or Congress) have seriously pursued.
So far Clinton has also shown signs of squeamishness. Far from talking tough to seniors when he unveiled a commission last week to study entitlement spending, he pledged to protect them. He is expected to do the same at a seniors’ center in New Jersey this week. Advisers have even suggested he assume the mantle of the late Tip O’Neill as defender of the elderly. “They’re ready for a new champion,” concludes adviser Paul Begala. In the political season now starting, Clinton will have to square feel-good politics with long-term trends.
Yet Clinton has at least made a start, even if he was prodded by President George Bush’s 1990 budget deal and by Democratic “deficit hawks” in 1993. Last year’s budget agreement, though anathema to Republicans, helped reassure the markets and keep interest rates low. It reduced 1995’s likely federal deficit to $165 billion – the smallest (when compared with the size of the economy) since 1979. Clinton’s new budget shows a Democratic president proposing remarkable austerity: elimination of 100 programs, cutbacks in 300 others. Even the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee was forced to concede that Clinton had “shown courage.”
That “courage” is paying off politically. The economy is rolling along; the popularity of Ross Perot, who ran as champion skinflint in 1992, is in decline. Few Americans now cite the debt as a leading concern. As a result, Clinton has room to maneuver. It’s easier for him to oppose a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced federal budget. Debate on the measure begins in the Senate this week. Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, its sponsor, thinks he may have the votes; polls show overwhelming public support. But with “short term” deficits seemingly under control, opposition won’t damage Clinton.
Still, the president and his aides know the deeper theme of generational fairness is potent. In fact, they are making bold to adopt it. The new budget asserts that the Clinton health-care reform plan would save $58 billion over the next five years alone. Such numbers enabled budget director Leon Panetta to send Congress a 10-page essay in which the administration touts its intergenerational statesmanship. “We’re reducing the burden on future generations,” Panetta declares.
But raising that claim is risky. The burden on future generations remains scary even by the administration’s own reckoning. According to White House calculations, the accumulated federal debt is expected to pass $6 trillion in 1999 -and interest payments on that debt will remain an onerous 14 percent of the budget. Using a new branch of econometrics called generational accounting, the White House estimated that kids in 13 year-old Chelsea Clinton’s generation will have to fork over the equivalent of 38 percent of their lifetime income to government-up from 32 percent for those in her dad’s cohort. Theoretically, the unborn will be forced to contribute 66 percent of their lifetime income. “The grown-ups are still fiddling while their kids’ – and their kids’ kids’ – future burns,” declares Jon Cowan of the lobby group Lead . . . or Leave. “It’s fiscal child abuse.”
Clinton’s budget is largely mute about the real crisis: entitlements. It is brutal in holding down “discretionary” spending on items from weapons systems to public housing. But the intergenerational problem is the continued growth of existing entitlement programs – not to mention the eventual cost of new ones Clinton wants to create. Entitlements – automatic, mandated payments to qualifying citizens for everything from social security to disability insurance – have risen steadily. They now account for about half the budget.
Clinton has spoken eloquently about the ruinous effects of soaring health-care spending on both public and private budgets. But the claim that his plan would produce immediate savings to the government was dismissed last week by the most credible of sources – the Congressional Budget Office. In the long run, concluded CBO Director Robert Reischauer, Clinton’s Plan would indeed cover everyone and slow the rise of health-care spending. But over the next five years it would add some $70 billion in federal debt. That change alone nearly wipes out Panetta’s alleged “improvement” in generational accounting.
More important was Reischauer’s overall characterization of the plan. White House officials were relieved that he hadn’t used the “T word” – taxes – to describe its mandated insurance premiums. But he did use the “E word.” The whole $1.2 trillion-a-year program, he said, was a new “entitlement”: not really a private insurance scheme but an “exercise of sovereign power” that must be listed in the budget, like social security.
Yet according to NEWSWEEK estimates, even Reischauer was too kind to Clinton’s proposal (chart). In addition to the sweeping guarantee of adequate health care for all subsidized by taxes where necessary – there are specific new entitlements: one to subsidize 80 percent of the health-care costs of workers covered by early-retirement health-care programs; another to provide home health care for the elderly and disabled. The CBO didn’t question White House cost estimates for either. But together the programs could show annual overruns of $50 billion to $60 billion by the year 2000.
Few insiders believe Congress will pass the early-retiree subsidy as it stands: it’s too naked a payoff to auto, steel and airline companies that are stuck providing such costly coverage under existing labor-union contracts. But Congress might well pass some lesser subsidy for all early retirees – whether they have generous programs now or not. Any such program would be expensive. Clinton’s idea, careful private estimates show, would cost $13 billion a year right away-and $25 billion annually in a few years.
Clinton’s planners believe they can shorten costly hospital stays and save money by providing living assistance and nursing help to the homebound. It’s an honest belief-but a huge fiscal risk. To limit abuse, the Clinton plan would require a doctor to certify that a patient met strict standards of impairment. But such standards tend to be subjective. “It boils down to a warmheartedness test,” says Susan Tanaka of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “The warmer the doctor’s heart, the more who pass the test.” She and others believe that such a program will cost double Clinton’s estimate of $20 billion a year by the year 2000.
The Clinton plan rests on a deeper faith: that the government can somehow be both warmhearted and hardheaded. The fiscal track record to date isn’t encouraging. Take Medicare. Government experts first predicted that Medicare, enacted in 1965, would cost $10 billion a year by 1990. The real number turned out to be $107 billion. Such numbers should make the president and Congress cautious as they move ahead on health-care reform. They might do well to remember the theme song Bill Clinton chose for his last campaign: “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow).”
The Congressional Budget Office said that the White House had underestimated the cost of Clinton’s health-care plan. But a NEWSWEEK analysis found that both the CBO and Clinton ignored two new health-care entitlements that could swell the deficit.
B_Estimated Deficit_b In billions of dollars 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Clinton budget $165 $170 $186 $190 $181 CBO 171 167 202 212 225 NEWSWEEK estimate 181 190 225 255 270
Source: Clinton’s budget, Congressional Budget Office and NEWSWEEK sources.
title: “A New Generation Gap” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Michael Green”
Fifteen years ago, older adults at the playground were generally assumed to be grandparents. These days they’re just as likely to answer to “Daddy.” Life expectancy is rising; couples are postponing marriage and childbirth. Aggressive new fertility treatments are making it possible for those in midlife and even older to have children. The number of moms between the ages of 40 and 44 is the highest it’s been since the 1960s, before the pill. In 2002, more than 5,000 women between 45 and 49 gave birth–a rate that has more than doubled in 10 years–and more than 200 babies were born to women 50 to 54. Although the statistics are sketchy, numbers of midlife and late-life fathers are also rising. In 2002, more than 20,000 children were born to men between the ages of 50 and 54–up from 14,000 in 1992. More than 8,000 men 50 and older became fathers in 2002. Dr. Marc Goldstein, chief of male reproductive medicine at New York Presbyterian-Weill Medical College, says the cutoff age for people seeking fertility treatment is dissolving. “Treating people who five years ago would have been considered too old, " says Goldstein, “is becoming routine.”
Every stop on the road–from conception to college graduation–brings both unexpected pleasures and unique challenges to late-life parents. Biologically speaking, humans are designed to procreate in their mid- to late teens. Those who postpone it three or four decades and beyond are part of a vast new social experiment. Sometimes, older parents say, it’s even harder than it looks. “I wouldn’t put frosting on it,” says Ken Wright, 54, a book retailer from Richardson, Texas, who finds he’s often too achy to play with his 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. “If you’re 30 and make a conscious decision to wait until you’re 50, you’re wrong.”
Strained backs aside, late-life parenthood is not without serious medical risk. As women age, their pregnancies can be more complicated for both mother and child. Rates of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and miscarriage all rise. The frequency of Down syndrome jumps exponentially, too. And despite tabloid headlines about late-life celebrity dads–Anthony Quinn was 81; Tony Randall, 78; Saul Bellow, 84–doctors have uncovered strong links between advanced paternal age and Down syndrome and schizophrenia in their children.
Psychiatrists who work with older parents say that maturity can be an asset in child rearing–older parents are more thoughtful, use less physical discipline and spend more time with their children. But raising kids takes money and, and most of all, energy. Many older parents find themselves calibrating their limited financial resources, waning energy and failing health against the growing demands of an active child. Dying and leaving young children is probably the older parent’s biggest, and often unspoken, fear. Jack Metcalf, 78, has no illusions about how much time he has left with his 11-year-old daughter, Hannah. For Metcalf, every day is a gift. “I would like the pleasure,” he says, “of seeing her graduate from high school.”
With all the focus on conceiving their late-life children, older parents, with comparatively fewer productive work years left, often find themselves abruptly restructuring their lives in order to meet the financial demands of even healthy children. Though he has grown children from his two previous marriages, Larry Hutchison, 54, a carpenter from Dallas, was surprised to find himself paying $600 a month to send 5-year-old Katie to private pre-school. Now he’s moving to the suburbs and has enrolled in night school to become a physician’s assistant. In two years, four years shy of his 60th birthday, Hutchison will embark on a new career, one that he hopes will generate a heftier and steadier paycheck. “I have to provide for the necessities she needs now,” he says. Having late-life children, says Stanford University economics professor Martin Carnoy, author of “Fathers of a Certain Age: The Joys and Problems of Middle-Aged Fatherhood,” often means parents, particularly fathers, “end up retiring much later.” For many, retirement becomes an unobtainable dream.
Metcalf knows it takes money to raise kids. After years of running his own marketing business, he’s taken a job as a substitute teacher to help support Hannah. Money is a concern, of course, but he’s also worried that his stamina will give out first. Sure, he can still ride bikes with his athletic fifth grader, and sometimes they dance up a storm, but he’s learned that young at heart doesn’t mean young. Lately he’s been sneaking in afternoon naps to keep up his energy. “My body is aging,” says Metcalf. “You can’t get away from that.”
Often, older parents hear the ticking of another kind of biological clock. Announcing his son Harry’s impending birth, comedian David Letterman, 56, quipped, “Not only will I be the child’s father, I’ll be his grandfather.” He continued, “Besides, by the time the kid is out stealing cars, I’ll be dead.” Funny, yes. But therapists who work with midlife and older parents say fears about mortality are nothing to laugh at. “They worry they’ll be mistaken for grandparents, or that they’ll need help getting up out of those little chairs in nursery school,” says Joann Paley Galst, a New York psychologist. But at the bottom of those little fears there is often a much bigger one: “that they won’t be alive long enough to support and protect their child,” she says. Kids often share those fears. “They make very private, very painful calculations,” says William Pollack, director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital in Boston. “How old will he be when I start high school? How old will he be when I graduate?”
Many late-life parents, though, say their children came at just the right time. After marrying late and undergoing years of fertility treatment, Marilyn Nolen and her husband, Randy, from Killeen, Texas, had twins. “We both wanted children,” says Marilyn, who was 55 when she gave birth. The twins have given the couple what they desired for years, “a sense of family.” Dusting off the cradle for a second time can also be a chance to rewrite history. Dr. Sherman Silber, head of the Infertility Center of St. Louis, has performed vasectomy reversals for 27 years and kept tabs on the offspring. Kids of older dads, he says, are often smarter, happier and more socially attuned because their fathers are more involved in their lives. “The dads are older, more mature,” says Silber. “And more ready to focus on parenting.” Although he already has children in their 20s, Steven Toushin, 54, says he’s a different kind of dad this time around: more relaxed and better able to weather the twins’ demands. “I just couldn’t have done that in my 20s,” he says. For Toushin, having midlife children was a chance to get it right. For that, he says, you can never be too old.
