Nania visits GOP Town Committee

The Republican Town Committee met tonight. The highlight for me was hearing from former state Rep. Tony Nania. He's running for the CT-5 GOP nomination against Dave Cappiello... one of them will almost certainly be facing Chris Murphy in the fall. I don't recall any real specifics, but he did seem to get a positive response when discussing the 2nd amendment. Beyond that, I asked about my pet peeve... the unfunded long-term liabilities... which btw, made the cover of today's CT Post under the headline "Medicare, Social Security in peril" (AP, by Martin Crutsinger).

The trustees, issuing their once-a-year analysis, said the resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041. The reserves in the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital benefits were projected to be wiped out by 2019.

Both those dates were the same as in last year's report. But the trustees warned that financial pressures will begin much sooner when the programs begin paying out more in benefits each year than they collect in payroll taxes. For Medicare, that threshold is projected to be reached this year and for Social Security it is projected to occur in 2017.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, one of the trustees, warned of a fiscal train wreck unless something is done.

"Without change, rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues and threaten America's future prosperity," Paulson told a news conference....

For what it's worth, addressing Social Security is one issue where I give great credit to President Bush. I have a lot of disagreements with him, but at least he pushed the envelope on this to the point that he got even Teddy Kennedy to acknowledge it has solvency issues. And IMO, that was a major accomplishment.

Anyway, about Tony Nania... he seemed like an intelligent guy who is sincerely interested in the job.

Tim White

UPDATE: Dave Cappiello's Communications Director, Adam Bauer, emailed me with the SOTS link that provides 2008 election dates, including the 2008 primary election date: August 12.