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Truth and Politics Don’t Mix on Entitlements

U.S. Senator Hiram Warren Johnson, a staunch isolationist, is believed to be the author of the quote, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”  The same might be said for politics today.  Politicians often avoid the truth because it can be unpopular.

For example, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview with Bloomberg last week, blamed Congress for its reluctance to take on entitlement reform.  “It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said.  “It’s a bipartisan problem—unwillingness to address the real drivers of debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”

In fairness, McConnell was conveniently overlooking the impact of the tax cuts on the debt.  Everyone from budget hawk conservatives to big spending liberals can reasonably agree that the significant decline in revenue from corporate tax collections because of the rate reduction contained in the 2017 tax plan contributed to the spike in the deficit, to $779 billion.

However, McConnell is absolutely correct that Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds are in deep trouble. The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports that these entitlement program trust funds “will all be exhausted by 2032 without action to stabilize their finances.”

Congress doesn’t want to tackle entitlement reform because it means hard choices—reduce benefits, raise the retirement age, increase taxes.  McConnell’s mere suggestion of the importance of reforms fed neatly into the Democrats mantra this election cycle that Republicans want to cut healthcare.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who is in a tight re-election fight with Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, seized on the opportunity.  Politico reported Manchin claimed Morrisey would curtail benefits “in a heartbeat.”  Morrisey pushed back, calling Manchin, “one of the most dishonest politicians you are going to find.”

But back to McConnell.  He also said having one party in charge of the White House, the House and Senate is not conducive to entitlement reform because neither party is going to be willing to take full ownership of the difficult choices.  “I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government.”

That’s unpopular truth-telling from McConnell, and something that Republicans don’t want to hear two weeks before the election when they are trying to hold their advantage in the Senate and avoid losing a majority in the House.

The last time Washington reformed entitlements was way back in 1983 when Republican President Ronald Reagan worked with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill. The two rivals joined forces to make changes to Social Security to keep it solvent.  Both parties had to agree to raise the retirement age so that neither party could use it against the other at election time.

But today entitlement reform is more of a political weapon.  “Shrinking those popular programs—either by reducing benefits or raising the retirement age—without a bipartisan deal would risk a political backlash in the next election,” reports Politico.

But  there is always a next election; all the while the changes necessary to fix Social Security and Medicare become even more difficult because they will require bigger cuts and even higher taxes.

That’s a fiscal truth that, unfortunately, does not fit easily into political campaigns.

 

 

 





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