POLITICS BEFORE SOLUTIONS

With the federal debt growing and entitlement costs growing even faster, New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg proposed last week to bring back the one element of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings fiscal restraint that actually worked: the threat of program cuts that forced Congress to pay attention to the deficit. Unfortunately, Sen. Gregg brings only half a threat, protecting revenue cuts and such areas as Defense spending while cutting entitlements.

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings didn’t work very well because members of Congress found ways around its spending caps, but by including programs that a wide range of ideologies had an interest in, it forced both parties to spend more carefully. The threat of sequestration – mandated across-the-board cuts in all affected spending programs to eliminate any deficit increase – saw to that. The measure eventually helped lead to the 1990 budget agreement signed by the first President Bush.

But that’s not in the Gregg proposal. Instead, after exempting Social Security, it leaves Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and veterans care open to sequestration but protects other programs dear to Republicans. And it leaves out a full pay-as-you-go provision, a means to force Congress to pay for any increase in spending or reduction in revenues. It further makes it even easier to cut entitlements by providing the president with line-item veto authority for an extended period, allowing him to withhold funds from programs but limiting the president’s authority to veto tax cuts.

Senate Democrats are expected to filibuster this proposal, and if they do, Republicans surely will blame them for not doing more on deficit reduction so the bill ultimately may look like an entirely political move. But the sustainability of Medicare, the health of Medicaid and the long-term outlook of Social Security really do need careful examination and, for Medicare in particular, a reassessment of what benefits will be offered under what conditions and how they will be paid for.

The reason is simple: If that program grows just 1 percent faster than the economy, by 2050 it would cost approximately $2.6 trillion, after adjusting for inflation; nearly the size of the federal budget in 2006.

A negotiation over these issues is difficult at any time; it is impossible when the debate is wrapped in a bill that assumes at the outset that the best choice is to cut entitlements ever deeper. Even in an election year, Congress can do better than that.