In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) reiterated the GOP’s commitment to tackling the ballooning costs of entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Accounting for more than 60 percent of the federal budget, entitlement costs are the primary drivers of the national deficit. (By comparison, non-defense discretionary spending — the portion of the budget that congress is currently bickering over — accounts for a mere 12 percent.) Those costs are set to further explode over the next few decades as millions of baby boomers reach the retirement age.
But entitlement programs have long been viewed (in fact, still are) as politically untouchable. At least half the battle, Boehner explained, would involve educating the American people as to size and scope of the problem. At the moment, he said, “most Americans don’t have a clue.”
And he’s right, if the results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are any indication. When asked whether cuts to Medicare were necessary to “significantly reduce” the deficit, only 18 percent of respondents said yes; 54 percent said no. The rest weren’t sure. On Social Security, 22 percent said cuts were needed, while 49 percent said they weren’t.
“I think it’s incumbent on us, if we are serious about dealing with the big challenges, that we go out and help Americans understand how big the problem is that faces us,” Boehner said. “Once they understand how big the problem is, I think people will be more receptive to what the possible solutions may be.”
But the Speaker explained that the Republican proposal, to be included as part of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget, would be short on specific proposals, instead focusing on broad goal for cost containment (though anyone familiar with Ryan’s “Roadmap” can probably guess what a GOP proposal might look like). Boehner also criticized President Obama for failing to put forward any sort of entitlement-reform proposal — specific or otherwise — in his own 2012 budget. “I think the president shrank from his responsibility to lead,” Boehner said. “He knows the numbers as well as we do.”
But Boehner said he maintains an “open,” “honest,” and “fair” relationship with the president and stands ready to work with Obama on entitlement reform. “I offered to the president we could lock arms and walk out and begin the conversation about the size of the problem,” Boehner said, to which the president responded “positively.”
Read the whole thing here.