Liberals are worried that next Monday’s “fiscal responsibility summit,” hosted by the Obama Administration, will be two things they don’t like: (1) yet another sop to conservatives, and (2) the beginning of a rightward shift on entitlement reform. Will the Obama team embrace the center-right consensus that Social Security is in crisis and that the only way to fix it is to cut benefits?
Ezra Klein argues that the Obama folks understand that Social Security has little bearing on America’s long-term financial solvency, and that they will use the summit to make the case that health care reform is the way to ease our entitlement problems.
That, basically, has been Orszag’s project: Talk a lot about the health care crisis and longer-term problems in the budget and get people to stop talking about an illusory crisis in a made-up program called socialsecurityandmedicareandmedicaid. Because what Orszag and Krugman both realize is that Social Security’s unfunded liabilities only look like the sort of problem you need to “fix” if you’re mixing it in with Medicare’s unfunded liabilities. If there’s an “entitlements problem” that requires an “entitlements commission” then that will cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. If there’s no “entitlements problem” and instead a health reform problem and some small questions about a politically electric program, then what you get is health reform — which is also a way to slow Medicaid and Medicare growth without resorting to cuts — and an end to the fear-mongering on Social Security.
Let’s hope the Obama team is this savvy. It would be pretty remarkable if they can channel the Social-Security-is-a-crisis! hysteria and turn it into even more energy behind the cause of universal health care.
