Democrats losing balance on fiscal debate

It's like conservatives have always said: Democrats are incapable of spending cuts. It is the party of Santa Claus. The party of ever higher taxes, irresponsible governance and no spending cuts.

Democrats like to say that they are for “balance” in the fiscal debate and that Republicans favor spending cuts. That argument is increasingly difficult to credit. 

Since the election last month, a few modest proposals have been floated to slow the growth in entitlement spending. None of these would fix the problem, but they would at least acknowledge that a problem exists. One by one, the ostensible advocates of balance have shot them down, portraying each in turn as a mortal threat to the poor or the aged. The Obama administration is mute on the latest escalation.

Nudging the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, which President Obama supported last year? Unconscionable. Changing the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated, which Mr. Obama also supported? Brutally unfair to veterans and seniors. Reform of Medicaid provider taxes, which liberal Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) only days ago described as a “charade” used by states to jack up funding from Washington? Unthinkable, the White House now says: In fact, with the Supreme Court having struck down a facet of Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act involving Medicaid, nothing in that program can be touched. And, while they’re at it, put Social Security off the table, too. We’re asked to accept the mythology that, though the pension and disability program is facing ever-widening shortfalls, it isn’t contributing to the overall deficit.

There are better and worse ways to bend the entitlement curve. Raise the Medicare age, but shield the neediest seniors. If you think Republicans are proposing the wrong way to adjust the cost-of-living index, finance expert Robert C. Pozen has proposed a progressive alternative.

But there’s no way to fix America’s problem without doing something on entitlements. If the Democrats — and Mr. Obama, in particular — don’t get more seriously into that discussion, they have no standing to complain about the Republicans’ lack of balance.

Now before all you left-wing nut jobs start picking this blog apart, you should know that every word of this blog beyond the first paragraph and the last paragraph comes from your left wing newspaper ,the Washington Post. You can read the full Washpo editorial here to remind yourselves who's right on the fiscal cliff discussions and who is dead wrong.