I’m trying to absorb this post from Kevin Drum, and this rather nasty accusation from Yglesias. In order to right our fiscal mess, I proposed means-testing social security, scrapping the Medicare prescription drug entitlement, extending the retirement age, and so on. Drum then makes the point that he’s talking about actual government programs, i.e. discretionary spending, not entitlements. So he claims that the government will save nowhere near enough by my proposals. And, in that respect, he’s right. But he wants to set the ground-rules by eliminating from any consideration by far the largest bulk of our unfunded liabilities! No fair. If entitlements are sacrosanct, of course you’re going to have to raise income taxes or payroll taxes, by a whopping amount. And I’m sure Drum and Yglesias and others cannot wait to do so in some form or other.
My whole point is to put middle-class entitlements on the table and to cut them substantially. Even though you may disagree with it, that’s not a free lunch, and it’s deeply unfair to claim it is. It’s also designed to protect the really needy. It’s interesting, though, that the big government left is so hostile to small government conservatives. It’s as if they really don’t believe we exist or are sincere. But we do and we are. We have yet to see what an honest direct attempt to argue for real entitlement cuts would do to our current political debate, because almost no politicians are ballsy enough to propose them. My hunch is that the American people would be prepared to make serious cuts in middle-class entitlements to save our fiscal standing. At some point, of course, they’ll have no choice. Responsible conservatives will tell them that now. Or raise their taxes. Which is it going to be?
Update: In Kevin’s defense, we may be writing past each other. In my original post, I wrote about balancing budgets. What I meant was addressing our underlying fiscal imbalance; not balancing the budget for the next fiscal year now. My original term was perhaps too vague and subject to misunderstanding. But I hope it’s clear what I meant now. And I’m certainly not trying to be dishonest. Au contraire. I’m trying to keep conservatives honest about what keeping the tax cuts would realistically require.
The Dish 