Thursday, May 25, 2017

Democrats’ Hypocrisy on the Trump Budget

As expected, the Left had a harsh reaction to President Trump’s first budget on its release Tuesday. Bernie Sanders called the proposed Medicaid reductions “just cruel,” the head of one liberal think-tank dubbed the budget as a whole “radical,” and on and on.

But if liberals object to these “draconian cuts,” there’s one potential solution: Look in the mirror.

And exactly who might be to blame for creating that toxic environment?

Democrats Are Using The ‘Mediscare’ Playbook

Democrats have spent the past several political cycles running election campaigns straight out of the “Mediscare” playbook. In case anyone has forgotten, political ads have portrayed Republicans as literally throwing granny off a cliff.

This rhetoric about Republican attempts to “privatize” Medicare came despite several inconvenient truths:

  1. The “voucher” system Democrats attack for Medicare is based upon the same bidding system included in Obamacare;
  2. The Congressional Budget Office concluded one version of premium support would, by utilizing the forces of competition, actually save money for both seniors and the federal government; and
  3. Democrats—in Nancy Pelosi’s own words—“took half a trillion dollars out of Medicare” to pay for Obamacare.

Given the constant attacks from Democrats against entitlement reform, however, Donald Trump made the political decision during last year’s campaign to oppose any changes to Medicare or Social Security. He reiterated that decision in this week’s budget, by proposing no direct reductions either to Medicare or the Social Security retirement program. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said the president told him, “I promised people on the campaign trail I would not touch their retirement and I would not touch Medicare.”

That’s an incorrect and faulty assumption, of course, as both programs rapidly spiral toward insolvency. The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund has incurred a collective $132.2 billion in deficits the past eight years. Only the double-counting created by Obamacare continues to keep the Medicare trust fund afloat. The idea that President Trump should not “touch” seniors’ retirement or health care is based on the fallacious premise that they exist beyond the coming decade; on the present trajectory, they do not, at least not in their current form.

Should Bill Gates Get Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare?

That said, the president’s reticence to “touch” Social Security and Medicare comes no doubt from Democrats’ reluctance to support any reductions in entitlement spending, even to the wealthiest Americans. When Republicans first proposed additional means testing for Medicare back in 2011, then-Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) opposed it, saying that “if [then-House Speaker John] Boehner wants to have the wealthy contribute more to deficit reduction, he should look to the tax code.”

In other words, liberals like Henry Waxman, and others like him, wish to defend “benefits for billionaires”—the right of people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to receive taxpayer-funded health and retirement benefits. Admittedly, Congress passed some additional entitlement means testing as part of a Medicare bill two years ago. But the notion that taxpayers should spend any taxpayer funds on health or retirement payments to “one-percenters” would likely strike most as absurd—yet that’s exactly what current law does.

As the old saying goes, to govern is to choose. If Democrats are so violently opposed to the supposedly “cruel” savings proposals in the president’s budget, then why don’t they put alternative entitlement reforms on the table? From eliminating Medicare and Social Security payments to the highest earners, to a premium support proposal that would save seniors money, there are potential opportunities out there—if liberals can stand to tone down the “Mediscare” demagoguery. It just might yield the reforms that our country needs, to prevent future generations from drowning in a sea of debt.

This post was originally published at The Federalist.