House Majority Leader Eric Cantor attempts to be serious in an op-ed in Politico today, an open letter to President Obama.
He starts out on a ridiculous note:
This is a leadership moment.
When Republicans gained control of Congress, we promised to do everything in our power to grow the economy and create jobs. From Day One, our majority has made clear that those goals can be achieved only by first getting America’s fiscal house back in order.
If the number one priority was creating jobs, why have they devoted so much time to their war on women, to devising legislative chastity belts to punish us? If the number one priority was creating jobs, why did they kill jobs with their cuts to community health centers? And if their goal is deficit reduction, why did they vote to repeal a law that cuts the deficit?
More blathering until he gets to the heart of the matter: let them eat catfood.
And what to make of leaving entitlements out of the budget entirely? Walling off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the budget may spare the president the tough decisions the president was elected to make. But kicking the can down the road is no substitute for real leadership. Just ask Greece.
Facing withering criticism over its budget, the White House now signals a new willingness to deal. The president says he is “glad” that Republicans will include entitlements in our budget and calls the move “significant progress that there is an interest on all sides on those issues.” Many Americans are understandably skeptical.
His actions are more important than his reassuring words. Can the president, who already added a new open-ended health care entitlement, suddenly summon the courage to rein in other entitlements? Is he willing to fight to ensure that the mission of health and retirement security is fulfilled?
Paul Krugman answers Cantor in this column.
The whole budget debate, then, is a sham. House Republicans, in particular, are literally stealing food from the mouths of babes — nutritional aid to pregnant women and very young children is one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks.
What would a serious approach to our fiscal problems involve? I can summarize it in seven words: health care, health care, health care, revenue.
Notice that I said “health care,” not “entitlements.” People in Washington often talk as if there were a program called Socialsecuritymedicareandmedicaid, then focus on things like raising the retirement age. But that’s more anti-Willie Suttonism. Long-run projections suggest that spending on the major entitlement programs will rise sharply over the decades ahead, but the great bulk of that rise will come from the health insurance programs, not Social Security....
What would real action on health look like? Well, it might include things like giving an independent commission the power to ensure that Medicare only pays for procedures with real medical value; rewarding health care providers for delivering quality care rather than simply paying a fixed sum for every procedure; limiting the tax deductibility of private insurance plans; and so on.
And what do these things have in common? They’re all in last year’s health reform bill.
That’s why I say that Mr. Obama gets too little credit. He has done more to rein in long-run deficits than any previous president. And if his opponents were serious about those deficits, they’d be backing his actions and calling for more; instead, they’ve been screaming about death panels.
I'd just add to the list an extremely expensive and increasingly futile war that too few seem interested in addressing when we're talking about deficits. If the GOP was serious about deficits, they'd be talking about the war, they'd be recognizing and accepting reality. What they are serious about is demolishing any program that doesn't make the private sector wealthier. They are serious about punishing women. They are serious about making the rich richer and the hell with everyone else.