A Better Way on Long-Term Deficits

Some measure of balance has been restored to the fiscal policy universe. Today, a coalition of moderate, left-leaning budget experts released a report directly criticizing the "Taking Back Our Fiscal Future" paper, the brainchild of an odd assortment of folks from Brookings, Urban, AEI, and Heritage that advocated severe cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The center-left crew, which includes CBPP's Robert Greenstein and Brookings' Henry Aaron, stress controlling costs in the entire health care system, modest benefit reductions/tax increases in the major entitlement programs, and the reform of regressive tax expenditures.

All decent stuff, considering the noxious alternative and the conservative tilt to the fiscal policy debate. Robert Kuttner points out what's wrong with this picture.

This debate gives you a sense of the narrow conventional wisdom a President Obama would face. The rightwing of the debate (including several centrist Democrats) says: balance the budget by gutting social insurance. The left wing says restrain deficits by raising taxes and cutting health costs. Hardly anyone says lower health costs by passing true national health insurance, and use deficits if necessary to cure what is already the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. But kudos to Greenstein and Aaron for playing hardball and asking their colleagues to think harder about just whose purposes they are serving.

Amen.