Entitlement Reforms Literature & Language Essay Paper (Essay Sample)

Entitlement Reforms
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Entitlement Reforms
According to the CITATION Con12 \l 1033 (Congressional Budget Office, 2012), entitlement refers to a legal obligation of the federal government to make payments to a person, group of people, business, unit of government, or similar entity that meets the eligibility criteria set in law and for which the budget authority is not provided in advance in an appropriation act. Spending for entitlement programs is controlled through those programs’ eligibility criteria and benefit or payment rules. The best-known entitlements are the government’s major benefit programs, such as social security and Medicare. Entitlement and entitlement programs are used synonymously in this essay. Reforming refers to ameliorating existing legislation in the interest of political, economic, social or cultural issues. Entitlement reforms thus broadly refers to efforts by the political class in various levels of the legislature to amend the statutory obligations that define and protect existing entitlement programs. In most cases, the entitlement program reforms are efforts by either individuals or political parties to restructure the provisions of the existing acts that protect these entitlement programs mainly to cut government spending. Entitlement reforms are mainly perceived as a veiled attack on these programs to cripple them and or propagate the interest of an individual or a party for various factors including political mileage.