Let's make a deal

This could be very good news:

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

Rather than roughly $2 trillion in savings, the White House is now seeking a plan that would slash more than $4 trillion from annual budget deficits over the next decade, stabilize borrowing, and defuse the biggest budgetary time bombs that are set to explode as the cost of health care rises and the nation’s population ages.

That would represent a major legislative achievement, but it would also put Obama and GOP leaders at odds with major factions of their own parties. While Democrats would be asked to cut social-safety-net programs, Republicans would be asked to raise taxes, perhaps by letting tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest households expire on schedule at the end of next year.

Silly me. I thought that this was what they were already working on. How can you address the nation's long term debt without addressing the federal budget's most expensive programs? But I am glad that they are finally getting down to brass tacks.

This is what I hoped would happen when the Republicans took control of the House. After the stimulus, health care reform, an ultimately failed bid to do cap and trade, a new arms control treaty, and a ton of other legislation, my sense was that Democrats were exhausted. Even though I'm not a Republican, I believed that if the government were to make any progress on the nation's problems, the energy would have to come from the other side of the aisle.

We don't have two political parties because half the country is good and the other half is evil. We have two parties because given the size of this country and human fallibility, no one political party is going to be able to adequately address all the legitimate needs the country faces.

My only concern, and it is a big concern, is that I can never tell whether the Republicans are against the size of the government or the size of the debt. They tend to conflate the two. And in fact, the extremists like Grover Norquist actually want the debt to balloon so that one day, America will face a situation like the Greeks have faced this summer, and we'll be forced to privatize Social Security and end Medicare. So they cut taxes and increase spending, like during the Bush years. There's nothing conservative about that.

But maybe there are legitimate conservatives in the GOP who, given the choice between a big government in the red and a big government in the black, would choose the latter. I'd be happy if President Obama negotiated a deal with those folks.

I'm not talking about a deal like signing onto the Ryan plan. The Ryan plan actually ends Medicare and replaces it with a voucher system called "Medicare."

What I'm talking about are cuts in the form that we've already seen in the health care reform legislation--"cuts" that reward doctors and hospitals for best practices, cuts in the form of changing Medicare from a fee for service system to a fee for outcome system.

Liberal reaction to this trial balloon has ranged from measured (Kevin Drum) to paranoid (Talking Points Memo.) I'm disappointed with this. In fact, I've been disappointed with the conventional wisdom in the liberal blogosphere about the debt negotiations. It ranges from dread of Republicans for threatening to default on the nation's debt if they don't get their way to contempt at Obama for getting rolled in these negotiations.

As if a fair amount of brinkmanship isn't part and parcel of politics. Liberals sound like they did in the Bush years, whining about how mean the Republicans are. Frankly, I can't blame the Republicans for playing this card. It really maximizes the power of House Republicans, outnumbered as they are by the Democrats in the Senate and at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

I only wish Democrats had played the same card first. In 2002, they could have held the debt ceiling hostage in exchange for the White House pulling the plug on any plans to invade Iraq. I would have supported that.

As to the President getting rolled, look at what he's shepherded through Congress so far. This is not a man who gets rolled. This is a man who gets stuff done.

The modern welfare state is a good thing, but it is always going to need tweaking to respond to demographic and fiscal changes. If Obama can ensure the long-term solvency of these programs with some tax increases and smart cuts, liberals should jump all over that.