The baby boomer population represents twenty-six percent of the United States. When we think of the elderly, we think of them as comfortable retired americans. but that is an illusion. The baby boomers generation was started on January 1st,1946. For the next 18 years, 10,000 people will retire every day. Most won’t have enough saved for retirement. When January 1st of last year came around, people knew the boomers would start turning sixty-five and that we would have a new type of crisis, retirement for seniors.

The average cost of health care in the United States can be somewhere around two and three thousand dollars a month depending on the states acording to an anual and monthly living cost survy for 2011. The lowest costs can be between one thousand and two thausand dollars a month, the highest rate can be between six thousand and eight thousand dollars a month.

Acording to U.S.A today, one in six older americans live below the poverty line.The number of older women that play a part in this is scary. Forty-three percent of older single hispanic women who live alone are in poverty, and thirty-four percent of black single women live in poverty. It doesn't help that the retirement checks are only worth an average of $1,200. That is only forty-two dollars and eighty-two cents a day.

In a survey by Wells Fargo’s investment, forty-eight percent of americans said they are not confident in the stock market, also in the survey twenty-four percent of people said they were thinking of moving their retirement age up. In CNN Money, the percentage of workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to forty-three percent in 2010, that is a increase from thirty-nine percent in 2009, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual Retirement Confidence Survey. Also in the Wells Fargo article it said that only about sixty-nine percent of people say they are even saving for retirement, that’s a drop from seventy-three percent in 2009.

A big factor in this is congress. While the elderly are in poverty, congress could help them (and this goes for all people.). Instead they are treating it like a joke and blaming one another. It’s not like we would be cutting that much, 1.2 billion in a decade, that’s all it would have taken to get back on track. Now the nation's debt is 5000 times bigger.

What congress needs to do is stop giving people houses, encourage people to save, stop giving extra checks to people who don’t need it, and teach people to think long term. It would also help for people to not think that the government will take care of them if they don’t work. Also people should probably work longer. The more they work, the more money they have, and the less of a problem we all have.

Now you ask me why I am telling you this. Well I guess you would call it a “ call to action”. I’ve given you some problems that are causing this crisis. I have also given you some solutions to it, now I ask my elected representatives: what are you going to do about it?