The Week

• A $250,000 debt at Tiffany’s? Newt is obviously desperate to close his gender gap.

• Newt Gingrich praised Paul Ryan’s budget, then issued a statement quibbling with part of its Medicare plan, then trashed the budget as “radical” on national television, and then had a spokesman say that his views are pretty close to Ryan’s. As of press time that’s where Gingrich stands. What Gingrich’s peregrinations reflect is that there is no popular way to bring revenues and spending into alignment over the long haul. That truth is also becoming clear in a special election to the House in New York, where a Republican seat is now up for grabs and Medicare is the top issue. Meanwhile, the actuaries of Social Security and Medicare have released their annual reports, which say that the programs’ dire outlooks are slightly worse than they thought last year. The only way to avoid sudden and severe changes in these programs is to reform them soon. Republicans should have no illusions about the popularity of reining in entitlement spending, nor about its necessity.