Martin Wolf says that although long-term deficits are a problem, it’s too early to rein in spending right now:
What is needed, instead, are credible fiscal institutions and a road map for tightening that will be implemented, automatically, as and when (but only as and when) the private sector’s spending recovers. Among the things that should be done right now is to put prospective entitlement spending — on public sector pensions, for example — on a sustainable path. It is, in short, about putting in place a credible long-term tightening that responds to recovery automatically.
That sounds like a good idea to me. That is, it would sound like a good idea if I could think of any way to make automatic future stabilizers truly credible. Right now, I don’t think you could pass any significant entitlement cuts or tax increases in the first place, let alone pass them embedded in a some kind of structure that seemed truly invulnerable to future political shifts. But I’m all ears if anyone has any ideas.
(Adding: I’m entirely in favor of a Social Security commission, similar to the 1983 commission, tasked with producing a conventional basket of small revenue increases and small benefit cuts that would balance Social Security’s book in the long term. This is, admittedly, a relatively small thing, since Social Security’s fiscal condition has improved over the past few years and is now projected to eventually go out of balance by only about 1.5% of GDP. But aside from the virtue of even small acts of fiscal rectitude, it would also have the huge virtue of taking Social Security off the table as a political issue. If we could, at long last, get the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and the Peterson folks to quit droning on endlessly about this, we might actually clear the way for discussion of some real issues. And it’s the kind of thing that can be put in place now and credibly be expected to unfold as planned.)
