Grown-up Deficit Reduction

As Jackie Calmes reports in The New York Times, President Obama and a bipartisan group of Senators are taking a more sensible approach to deficit reduction than the reckless cuts proposed by Congressional Republicans.

The White House has already opened back-channel conversations to test Republicans’ willingness to negotiate about the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security’s long-range solvency and an income-tax code riddled with more than $1 trillion a year worth of loopholes and tax breaks.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, all but invited Mr. Obama on Tuesday to start huddling about the issues, and a bipartisan group of senators held a third meeting to write debt-reduction legislation based on the recommendations in December of the majority of a bipartisan fiscal commission established by the president.

Most experts on either political side, including the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, acknowledge that any serious deficit reduction effort must reduce the cost of entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security), cut defense spending and raise federal revenues. It is reassuring to see the President and Senators from both parties resisting the political grand-standing of Congressional Republicans who seek to address the deficit solely with cuts that exempt entitlements and defense.

UPDATE: Blogger Andrew Sullivan, heretofore a big booster of the President, is sharply critical of his approach to deficit reduction with this budget proposal.

They have to lead, because this president is too weak, too cautious, too beholden to politics over policy to lead. In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.

To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you're fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama's cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America's fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.

--Ballard Burgher