Obama, Conceding Budget Failings, Seeks Consensus
By JACKIE CALMES 9 minutes ago
Obama said that any compromise to address Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would first require an effort to build bipartisan trust.
.The debt crises last year in Greece and other European countries served as a warning about the economic perils of chronic budget imbalances, and the rise of the Tea Party movement reflected a broader concern among Americans about the nation’s rapidly mounting debt.
Now some Democrats and Republicans are re-examining whether the political risks of raising revenues and curbing the most popular social programs might be outweighed by the urgency of addressing the looming budget impact of an aging population and rapidly rising medical costs.
“The feeling to do genuine deficit reduction is greater on both sides of the aisle than I’ve ever seen it,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “The question is meeting in the middle and throwing away the ideological baggage.”
The White House has already opened back-channel conversations to test Republicans’ willingness to negotiate about the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security’s long-range solvency and an income-tax code riddled with more than $1 trillion a year worth of loopholes and tax breaks.
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, all but invited Mr. Obama on Tuesday to start huddling about the issues, and a bipartisan group of senators held a third meeting to write debt-reduction legislation based on the recommendations in December of the majority of a bipartisan fiscal commission established by the president.
“If you look at the history of how these deals get done, typically it’s not because there’s an ‘Obama Plan’ out there,” Mr. Obama said, citing deal-making precedents under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and his own tax cuts deal with Congressional Republicans in December. “It’s because Democrats and Republicans are both committed to tackling this issue in a serious way.”
While no budget summitry is imminent, Mr. Obama said he and Republican leaders are “going to be in discussions over the next several months.” He said moving forward required “a spirit of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans. And I think that’s possible.”
Yet it seems clear that the parties are not at that point, and the hurdles, in any case, are huge. The House began a bitter three-day debate about Republican leaders’ proposals to slash far more deeply into domestic programs than Mr. Obama or Senate Republicans are willing to accept.
Both parties are simultaneously positioning themselves for the 2012 elections, and many people on both sides are reluctant to cede political talking points — whether it is Democrats claiming Republicans want to privatize Social Security or Republicans insisting Democrats want only to raise taxes.
After much internal debate about the political risks, House Republican leaders announced that their own budget for fiscal year 2012, which begins Oct. 1, “will lead where the president has failed and include real entitlement reforms” in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
But in the Senate, Mr. McConnell signaled a different approach. He indicated he is ready to negotiate now with Mr. Obama to curb entitlement program costs, which, along with military spending and interest on the national debt, are driving projections of unsustainable debt in coming decades. |
