It’s funny how often I see editorials in the Washington Post that make it obvious that the author does not read the front-page of the paper. Today we have Dana Milbank mocking the members of the Supercommittee.
Reasonable people on all sides know that tackling the nation’s long-term debt problems will require both an increase in taxes and cuts to entitlement programs. But just weeks from the committee’s deadline, Republicans continue to resist new tax revenues, and Democrats dance around the need for entitlement cuts.
That seems fair enough. Although he lazily treats all entitlements as equals, he’s right that we can’t make significant reductions in the long-term structural deficit without making some cuts. And he’s also right that we can’t make any kind of deal without adding more revenue. And it’s true that the Republicans are resisting new taxes. However, is it true that the Democrats are dancing around the need for entitlement cuts? On the front-page of this morning’s Washiington Post is an article with the headline: ‘Supercommittee’ showing signs of life. Here’s what it says about the Democrats on the Supercommittee.
With a Thanksgiving deadline fast approaching, a special debt-reduction committee is suddenly springing to life on Capitol Hill.
Democrats made the first move in a closed-door meeting this week, pressing the bipartisan panel to pursue a far-reaching deal to slice $3 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade through an equal mix of spending cuts and new revenue. The proposal calls for significant cuts to health and retirement programs, as well as $1.3 trillion in new taxes.
Those health and retirement programs are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and possibly veteran’s benefits. In other words, they’re entitlements.
[Sen. Max] Baucus [D-MT], who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, offered to cut as much as $500 billion from Medicare and other health programs and to adopt a less generous measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits, according to aides familiar with the talks. He also called for as much as $300 billion in new measures aimed at stimulating the flagging economy.
Republicans quickly rejected that offer. Senior aides called the tax and stimulus provisions unacceptable.
So, what we have here is a very significant offer by the Democrats. The Supercommittee is charged with the task of cutting $1.5 trillion from the budget over the next decade, but the Democrats’ offer is double that number. The Democrats’ plan also takes a nick out of sacred cows like Social Security and Medicare that their base expects them to protect at all costs. In other words, they’re not wasting everyone’s time by making some stupid offer just to set a negotiating marker. Yet, the Republicans have done nothing comparable. They just refuse to discuss revenues at all.
Yet, Milbank reports that the Democrats aren’t discussing entitlements at all. Watch.
The only thing the [committee members] seemed to agree on was that they weren’t focusing on the main issues. “Non-defense discretionary spending represents less than one-fifth of total federal spending,” [Sen. Patty] Murray [D-WA] pointed out. “Listening to the debates here in D.C. over the last few months, you would think this small piece of pie was a whole lot bigger.”
“In many respects today,” [Rep. Jeb] Hensarling [R-TX] concurred, “we may be debating the pennies, nickels and dimes in a debt crisis that is demanding half dollars and dollar bills.”
Compared to these posturing games, genuine stunts were more compelling – such as the demonstrator who disrupted the proceedings by shouting out a different solution: “End the wars! That’s how we fix the deficit. And all this obfuscation with percentages of GDP, this is just trying to confuse the issue.”
This is another in the genre of ‘both sides are equally shitty.’ It’s not true. One side recognizes that it has to make concessions, and one side sees no need to make any concessions.
Yet, this time, the Republicans really have little choice. If they don’t cave on the revenue side of things, the Pentagon takes a huge hit.
If the committee’s mission fails, across-the-board reductions will be triggered in January 2013.
Those cuts would fall heavily on the Pentagon, so Republicans are feeling pressure to seek a compromise to avoid them. On Wednesday, during the supercommittee’s fourth public hearing, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said defense spending would fall $110 billion short of keeping pace with inflation by 2021.
In any case, Milbank’s reporting is inaccurate and unfair.
