Ezra Klein posts the above graph and argues that the appointment of entitlement foe Judd Gregg to commerce doesn’t mean Obama will cut entitlements:
To believe Gregg will lead the administration on some Samuelson-esque crusade to rip privatize Social Security and slash Medicare is to assume that he will have more power than Orszag, Furman, Summers, and the entirety of the left-of-center economics establishment. It’s not likely. But he does bring some credibility to the idea of an entitlements commission. And it’s not hard to see an entitlements commission being re-conceived as a "long-term fiscal security" commission (hopefully with a better name). And it’s not impossible to see such a commission being used as a vehicle for health reform. The fact that the administration is already stocked with powerful voices interested in defining entitlement reform as health reform makes Gregg’s inclusion much less threatening.
I suspect (and hope) that Ezra is wrong, and that Obama intends to make the Grand Bargain on entitlements (a mix of benefit cuts, premium increases and tax hikes) a core feature of his first term.
The Dish 