In June 2009, President Obama said, “Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin.” Two years later, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have advanced a serious proposal to deal with these two biggest drivers of our debt. Obama and his party could have embraced aspects of Ryan’s proposal, which builds on recommendations advanced by Democrats during the Clinton years, or they could have offered a serious proposal of their own. Instead, however, they seem to view Ryan’s plan as a political panacea — something to distract voters from their own lack of leadership on entitlements, their own lack of seriousness on deficits, and their own lack of judgment in ramming through Obamacare.

But although Democrats and their allies are now consumed with their Mediscare offensive, they still need to answer for the effects that Obamacare would have on entitlements. In addition to its detrimental impact on Americans’ freedom, Obamacare would affect our entitlement equation in two major ways: First, it would explode Medicaid spending. Second, and even more importantly, it would launch a massive new entitlement program and would loot from already barely solvent Medicare to pay for it. Progressives like to claim that Republicans want to advance their plans on the backs of seniors, but the same could be said, much more honestly, about Obamacare.