Senate Democrats led by Patty Murray of Washington and Chuck Schumer of New York have an odd way of looking at things. Murray is chairwoman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, while Schumer is among the party’s messaging gurus. According to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, a source familiar with Murray’s and Schumer’s thinking on the stalemated debt-ceiling talks says they fear President Obama will give away their party’s advantage on the Medicare issue. Obama would do so, the source claims Murray and Schumer believe, by agreeing to Medicare reforms in return for Republicans accepting tax increases. “We shouldn’t be giving away our advantage on Medicare. We should be very careful about giving away the biggest advantage we’ve had as Democrats in some time.” In other words, they want to keep entitlement programs like Medicare off-limits to spending cuts, period. If such reasoning strikes you as odd, it should, because the Medicare-cuts horse left the barn more than a year ago. It was none other than Obama and the Democrats who controlled Congress who swung the barn door wide open with $500 billion in spending cuts to Medicare Advantage, massive cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors, and big Medicare payroll tax increases to fund Obamacare’s federal takeover of what’s left of the nation’s private health care system. Democrats who think poll data showing them with a clear advantage now over Republicans on Medicare make a huge mistake by assuming most voters won’t wise up to what they did to Medicare with Obamacare when the 2012 election rolls around. (Hint: Many seniors already have.)
The likely source of such fractured fairy-tale logic is the liberal article of faith since the New Deal that once established, the popularity of federal entitlement programs with middle-class voters makes them immune from financial and political realities. And they were right, at least as long as there were enough Peters to tax in order to pay for Paul’s Medicare (plus his Social Security, food stamps, college loans, mortgage subsidies, prescription drugs, green energy projects, bridges to nowhere, ACORN grants, etc.). But now that the liberal welfare state’s bills are coming due and exploding federal entitlements are at the heart of the government’s spending and debt crises, most Americans realize that reasonable reforms can no longer be put off; the tough decisions must be made now.
That’s why House Speaker John Boehner was right to reject Obama’s proposal to raise taxes by $1 trillion now in return for spending reforms tomorrow. This is the classic promise of the addicted: Give me a fix today and I will go into to rehab tomorrow. Were it the happy days of the New Deal coalition again, such an offer might work. But in the 21st century, Americans see Europeans rioting in the streets to protest cuts in their government benefits and know that it is not too late for this country to avoid a similar fate. But to avoid Europe’s agony, Washington’s spending addiction must be broken and that means no tax hikes, period.
