I have a new article up at National Review Online on why danger lurks for Republicans, and the nation, in the debt-ceiling showdown:
Democrats want a deal that doesn’t give an inch on what really matters to their voting base — which is the entitlement status quo….
To further that goal, the president and his allies are playing a familiar card. It’s not that they are against entitlement “reform,” they say, it’s just that they want to protect the beneficiaries from any financial sacrifice. And so we learn in recent days (see here and here) that Democrats are willing to put sizeable Medicare and Medicaid “cuts” on the table….
These kinds of changes in Medicare and Medicaid are nothing new. Various versions of them have been included in every budget deal going back 30 years, and most especially in the bipartisan deals of 1990 and 1997. They do not constitute genuine entitlement reform. They will not fix Medicare and Medicaid. And they will not solve the nation’s budget problem….
Read the whole article here.