Last week's CBO report popped a big hole in the Austerians' entitlement cuts balloon. The CBO cut its deficit projection for the next decade by $200 billion, with this year's deficit shrinking to $642 billion, the smallest shortfall since 2008. A relatively huge chunk of that decrease—$900 billion—is in Medicare and Medicaid spending, as CBPP illustrates with this chart.
The bottom line: Medicare and Medicaid are not in crisis. They don't demand immediate fixes. No more than they have
since at least 1990 when projections of Medicare's looming insolvency have been wrong every single year.
Benefit cuts to these programs just don't need to happen, not as part of a grand bargain, not as part of a debt ceiling deal, not as a part of any policy-making.