Fighting around the edges
Published 12:01 am Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Any hopes that President Obama’s budget proposal would begin the long-overdue “adult conversation” about America’s debt crisis were clearly misplaced. The bloodsport of today’s politics, the White House apparently determined, doesn’t allow for unilateral leadership on what has become the most dangerous threat to America’s future.
Sadly, it may be right.
Until both parties’ leaders recognize the status quo as the existential threat that it is, and are willing to share the political risk of addressing it, they’ll continue to skirmish around the edges of the real problems: unsustainable spending in Medicare, Medicaid and defense, and a tax system that’s loaded with outdated but jealously guarded breaks and generates too little revenue.
The president’s $3.7 trillion spending plan for fiscal year 2012, unveiled Monday, purports to trim $1.8 trillion from the deficit over the next decade — based on optimistic assumptions. That still leaves $7.2 trillion of new debt over that span.
Recommendations from the president’s bipartisan deficit reduction commission are all but ignored. That panel’s proposal would cut four times the amount from the deficit that Obama’s plan does, because it takes on entitlement spending and real tax reform — two things Democrats and Republicans, despite all their talk, remain unwilling to touch.
The deficit commission also proposed a necessary and modest adjustment to Social Security taxes and benefits that will keep the program on a solid footing as baby boomers create a larger pool of beneficiaries. (Let’s be clear, again: Social Security is not responsible for any part of the ongoing deficit problem. It does, however, need to be tweaked to avoid having its surplus run out in 2037.)
Republicans, who as the new majority in the House now hold a lever in the D.C. power structure, last week proposed tens of billions in cuts over the next seven months — but only in a narrow range of discretionary spending. In their zeal, they would kill vital programs such as AmeriCorps, the successful national service program long supported by leaders on both sides of the aisle, but they propose no meaningful spending reforms to entitlements or defense.
Both sides will have to step up to this challenge. In today’s icy political atmosphere, though, it’s hard to imagine how the trust necessary for bipartisan deal-making can be forged.
But if not this year, when? Must we wait through another presidential election cycle before making meaningful headway on a problem that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has called the greatest threat to our national security?
Yes, taking it on is politically risky. Continuing to put it off, however, is far riskier.
