Avoiding Hard Choices

President Barack Obama's new budget is the opening act in a tawdry drama now playing at a national capital near you. The Republicans in Congress, led by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, soon will join Obama on stage.

Unfortunately, neither is reading from the right script — the one that lays out lasting solutions to runaway entitlement spending.

In his Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column Feb. 16, O. Ricardo Pimentel suggests that the nation hand off this responsibility to a commission. The commission would suggest solutions, which would be subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress. It might be time for that.

But it would be far better if Republicans proposed reasonable ways to rein in spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security now. By demurring, Obama is daring them to go first. They should take up his challenge.

Obama's own deficit reduction commission suggested several options, including raising the retirement age or means-testing Social Security benefits and some combination of limiting benefits and raising taxes to make Medicaid and Medicare solvent. Obama ignored these recommendations.

Yes, Obama would cut discretionary spending, and, yes, that would reduce the federal budget shortfall.

But the president still leaves spending at historically high levels — 23.6 percent of national output next year. By 2020, it again would be 23 percent. His $3.7 trillion budget avoids hard choices.

Republicans are proposing far deeper cuts in discretionary spending than Obama; they recommend $62 billion in cuts for the rest of this fiscal year alone. We favor some cuts to discretionary spending to help restore discipline to the federal purse. But in reality, any discretionary cuts will have no real effect on long-term fiscal problems. Only 36 percent of the federal budget is subject to annual congressional spending bills. And done indiscriminately, budget-cutting could harm the economy and vulnerable citizens and still leave the nation on an unsustainable path.

Ryan's past proposals on entitlements, his "Roadmap for America's Future," was a talker. But his GOP colleagues walked away from it. On entitlements, both Republicans and Democrats, it seems, are weak-kneed.

With the 2012 election campaign under way, political courage already appears to be in short supply. Maybe Ryan and his Republican colleagues will surprise us. Otherwise, that commission approach, with real teeth, might be the best answer.

The curtain is about to go up on Act 2.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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