Hurt feelings

It's just too bad that Republicans got their feelings hurt when President Obama laid out his debt reduction plan last week. Medicare and Social Security are now part of our social contract. We have long since decided that no citizen need face the inherent dangers of aging, such as poor health and inability to work, on their own. We'd no more stand for abolishing either program than we would repealing the First (or the Second!) Amendment.

And yet that's what Representative Ryan's plan would do. It would slash the national debt by replacing Medicare with subsidies for younger workers to purchase private insurance once they turn 65--subsidies that aren't designed to keep pace with inflation. This would save the federal government a ton of money, but only by shifting the cost of health care to the next generation of seniors. Where does Representative Ryan's plan leave those who don't save enough? On their own.

President Obama's plan is a bit vague, but it does preserve the safety net for the elderly, which is paramount. It calls for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which is sensible, given that tax rates are at post-war lows. It establishes an advisory board that will review government payments to doctors and hospitals. No doubt such a board will revive GOP conspiracy theories about death panels, but the Ryan plan has a death panel too: the market. The rich and aged will be able to buy any treatment they want; the rest, not so much.

The President was also right to remind the public why we're in this mess. When the GOP ran the government, they basically put Afghanistan, Iraq and Medicare Part D on the nation's credit card. That's well over a trillion dollars right there. But now that they're out of power in the Senate and the White House, they're suddenly worried about the debt. Which is the only time they ever worry about debt.

What Republicans really worry about is how to dismantle the welfare state and return us to a Gilded Age economy. At least during the first Gilded Age most Americans could grow their own food. A second Gilded Age would make most of us corporate serfs. Such an agenda deserves a serious rebuke. If that's partisan, so be it.