Washington Fiddles While the Entitlements Problem Metastasizes

ho says there is no bipartisanship in the age of Trump? When it comes to federal deficits and debt, the parties have never been more aligned. For most of the last two decades, Republicans insisted they wanted to reform the federal entitlement programs to avert a painful fiscal crunch. In the George W. Bush years, they proposed Social Security reform. In the Obama years, they pushed for changes to Medicare. And all the while, Democrats insisted there was nothing to worry about except Republicans who wanted to deny seniors their benefits—or at least nothing that higher taxes on the wealthy couldn’t solve. But Donald Trump has put an end to the fighting by simply refusing to face the problem altogether, in effect denying that any solution is needed at all. He has taken the Democrats’ denial a step further, and Republicans have been all too willing to follow his lead.

 

 

https://www.weeklystandard.com/yuval-levin/the-entitlement-crisis-is-real-and-its-worse-than-you-think