Washington analysts are rightly asking how much political pain Republicans will face for touching the third rail of entitlement reform. But Democrats have their own budgetary bogeymen: defense cuts and tax hikes.
The Democratic Party has been dodging the same stereotypes for decades. That they are "soft on defense" or "tax-and-spend liberals." Democrats reaffirmed these labels in 2010. Stimulus, health care reform, the policies piled on. Old perceptions returned. This is quite likely the reason President Obama has only provided broad outlines for budget reform. The White House is wagering that the debt debate still offers too little upside to risk the political cost.
House Republicans recently took their chances. They voted to restructure Medicare and Medicaid for Americans under the age of 55. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the GOP proposal to partially privatize Medicare in 2022 would, when implemented, add more than $12,500 annually to seniors' healthcare bills. These are politically explosive conclusions.
Democrats dodged these landmines. It's Obama-esque political prudence, where "yes we can" wrestles with but should we, must we now and let's first see how other proposals pan out. Yet even Obama's broad strokes paint a picture that has haunted Democrats in the past.
The White House initially proposed a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending. "Non-security" was the keyword. Democrats dared not freeze spending in the one area that has historically left them out in the cold.
The GOP budget forced the president's hand. Obama responded by proposing $400 billion in military spending cuts over a dozen years. No less than The Washington Post previewed, in an editorial, the political attacks Democrats might face next year. The editorial cited Defense Secretary Robert Gates warning that large defense cuts would be "disastrous." The Post opined: "While some reductions in defense are inevitable, that is a warning that the administration and Congress cannot afford to disregard."
The president has also proposed allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for top earners. Polls show that this is a safer political bet. But Democrats still flinched on making that bet last year. Obama's party, particularly vulnerable House Democrats, feared the electoral backlash for proposing any tax hike.
There's evidence Americans are willing to make serious budget compromises to forestall a debt crisis, when comprehensively presented with the required tradeoffs. But political attacks tend to come piecemeal. Those attacks burn partly because they tend to be confined to one side's ideology. And both parties have the scars to prove it.
Ronald Reagan's proposal to slow the growth in Social Security quickly met political headwinds. Reagan soon retreated. The 1982 midterms, where the GOP took a beating in the House, helped create an atmosphere that led Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill to forge a compromise and fix Social Security for a generation. By the mid 1990s, Newt Gingrich pushed to curb Medicare spending. President Clinton successfully curbed Republicans for it. "Finally we learn the truth about how the Republicans want to eliminate Medicare," one Clinton re-election ad ominously warned. George W. Bush's push to partially privatize Social Security coincided with the beginning of his extended decline in the polls.
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