Social Security and Medicare cuts are coming because the bond market will force Congress: economist

The next decade will see a major catalyst for fiscal reform , namely the looming insolvency of the trust funds that support Social Security and Medicare. Lawmakers will initially try to put off making politically unpopular cuts to the programs, but that will cause a revolt in the bond market that eventually forces their hand, according to Oxford Economics.

Lawmakers have known for decades that U.S. entitlement programs are on unsustainable paths as demographics inevitably skew the population older.

Attempts to come up with a fix have gone nowhere, but the expected insolvency of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds by 2034 will serve as a catalyst, with the bond market forcing Congress to bite the bullet, according to Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

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