January 9, 2005
THIRD RAIL IN ONE HAND, FOURTH IN THE OTHER:
Applying Brakes to Benefits Gets Wide G.O.P. Backing (ROBERT PEAR, 1/09/05, NY Times)
The new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said he and other fiscal conservatives wanted to establish "enforcement mechanisms" to "put the brakes on the growth of entitlements," which pay benefits to millions of Americans according to formulas set by law."The White House also wants to address entitlement spending," Mr. Gregg said in an interview. [...]
A legislative proposal drafted by the White House would make it more difficult for Congress to pass legislation increasing the "long-term unfunded obligations" of benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare, Civil Service retirement and disability, veterans disability compensation, and health benefits for retired federal employees.
A White House document describing the proposal says that Medicaid, the health program for low-income people, can be added to the list as soon as federal officials devise a reliable way to estimate its long-term costs. Medicaid spending has shot up 63 percent in the last five years, so that federal and state outlays together now total more than $300 billion a year.
The president's proposal, the Spending Control Act, closely resembles a bill drafted by Representative Jim Nussle, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, who said his goal was to establish more "discipline and enforcement" of restraints on spending.
After twenty five years of the MSM saying how no one is willing to address the long-term growth of entitlements, now they'll start attacking the GOP for addressing the long-term growth of entitlements. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 9, 2005 8:48 AM
For 25 years the MSM didn't have the blogosphere on their backs. Now they do. A new day has dawned and we'll see how they handle it.
Posted by: erp at January 9, 2005 9:11 AMWhen they were saying "no one was willing to address the issue", it wasn't so much the entitlements they were talking about as it was the means pay for them. In that context "adressing the issue" was code for saying Democrats (and, in their eyes, the smarter Republicans) should face reality and raise taxes to the appropriate level to fund the growing entitlements, which they would have also told you were all very necessary uses of American tax dollars to advance an enlightened social policy.
Posted by: John at January 9, 2005 12:30 PM