In the last week or so, the White House has been consistently been distancing itself from the idea that Social Security should be included in budget discussions, including his
inclusion of Social Security in his budget proposal.
On Tuesday, OMB director Jacob Lew wrote an op-ed for USAToday stating in the most uncertain terms that we've heard from the administration yet that, as Social Security "does not cause our deficits," it should be a "parallel" issue to deficit discussions. Also on Tuesday, Jason Furman, deputy director of the President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, reiterated that message.
Furman . . . insisted that talk of Social Security reform "is not one you care about" if "you are worried about our long-run fiscal future."
"The reason you care about it is because you want to strengthen Social Security," Furman added in a speech at the progressive nonprofit group NDN. "It is such a critical part of our social insurance, the bedrock of retirement security for senior citizens, one of the leading anti-poverty programs for children, critical support for people with disabilities. And for all those reasons and the fact that its solvency ... is another 26 years, till 2037, the real motivation is strengthening the program."
Those remarks are a strong reflection of growing defensiveness on the White House's part in response to calls to reform the longstanding entitlement program. During this year's State of the Union address, Obama said he would "speak out against" plans to "target" Social Security should they materialize in Congress. Top adviser David Plouffe likewise said the president would neither slash nor reduce benefits while in office.
Furman's comments are more assertive in their framing. Rather than merely ruling out drastic changes to the entitlement program, he is arguing that Social Security has no place in a debate over the deficit -- a position directly at odds with the conclusions reached by the chair's of president's own deficit commission.
The "president's own deficit commission" has turned out to be the Social Security headache many predicted, largely because when it was supposed to be focusing on the deficit, it instead targeted Social Security. Which, by the way, doesn't contribute to the deficit. That might be just one of the reasons the commission was a massive failure, and is now just a stupid political tool and an ongoing headache. Because everyone is pretending that the catfood commission wasn't a failure and actually contributed something of use.
Let's hope that the strong talk coming out of the administration means that yes, finally, Social Security is off the table in the budget negotiations. But let's also hope that the White House remembers this experience and avoids the pitfall of "grand bargains" and "blue ribbon commissions" in the future. These are not people who want to have a serious, reality-based discussion of the issues and negotiate in that reality.