While Washington's elites debate cuts to Social Security and other "entitlements" to retroactively pay for the country's 30 year fling with low tax rates and runaway spending, there's one thing every budget-cutter seems to agree on. The people who should endure cuts are not those nearing retirement, but the so-called Generation Xers and Millenials.
This Eric Cantor quote buried at the end of today's much-discussed Washington Post article is typical of the Washington consensus:
Pressed to take a position on Ryan's "Roadmap" over the weekend, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) acknowledged on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "the direction in which the 'Roadmap' goes is something we need to embrace."
"The fundamental - the starting point in any plan - has got to be, we need to distinguish between those at or nearing retirement. Anyone 55 and older in this country has got to know that their Social Security benefits will not be addressed - will not be changed," Cantor said. "It is for all of the younger people - those 54 and younger - we're going to have to have a serious discussion."
In issuing their recommendations for President Obama's Fiscal Commission, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles seemed to share Cantor's outlook.
...Bowles and Simpson are proposing to slay a herd of sacred cows, including the tax deduction for mortgage interest claimed by many homeowners, the tax-free treatment of employer-provided health insurance and the practice of letting retirees claim Social Security benefits starting at age 62. The blueprint would raise the early retirement age to 64 and the standard retirement age to 69 for today's toddlers.
Ironically, it was Cantor's office that released this video last year accompanied by a blog post accusing the Democrats of "generational theft."
Am I missing something, or is there an inherent disconnect here between the determination to avoid punishing future generations on one hand, while simultaneously concluding that the burden of any cuts should fall entirely on them?
One would assume the imperative would be exactly the opposite. After all, it's not as though Washington's spending problems accumulated slowly over hundreds of years. The truth is that the bulk of that $14 trillion debt was accumulated over the past 30 years, largely as a result of low-tax, high-spending "conservative" economic policies.
None of this is to say that any particular group is responsible for the fiscal hole we're in - far from it. I'm sure there are many liberals on this site at or near retirement age who put plenty of effort into opposing Reaganite economic policies. There may have even been a few isolated voices on the right that didn't buy into the hype.
But to the extent that America aspires to any pretense of collective responsibility, this idea that young people alone should bear responsibility for any cuts is the most disgusting example of REAL "generational theft" I've ever seen.
Furthermore, I'd suggest that this is no accident. Because having cuts hit current retirees, or those nearing retirement, would almost certainly make them a nonstarter to begin with on a political level. Targeting generations unequally is the ONLY way conservatives in Washington and other groups licking their chops over social safety net changes can slip these policies through the door.
EDIT: A lot of people are accusing me of trying to start some kind of "generational war." Well, OK. To make sure no one gets the wrong idea, I changed the title and removed the entire section on Reagan's economic policies, which some might have misinterpreted as laying blame on the Baby Boomer generation as a whole.
Still, I think this is a valid, and sadly unnoted, topic of discussion. Yes, people should say no to cuts of any kind to Social Security and other safety net programs. But we should also say no to a mentality like Cantor's that exempts one generation while accepting the need to reduce benefits for another. That is the only form of "generational warfare" I see out there.