It’s an election year, so voters should prepare for endless speeches about the seemingly endless river of red ink flowing from Washington. While talk of reining in out-of-control spending is well past due, one cannot help but roll their eyes and hold on to their wallets when big-spending politicians talk about the budget.
No one seems to deny we face a budget crisis in Washington; taxpayers are staring at a fourth straight year of trillion-dollar budget deficits. Unfortunately, Republicans and Democrats are at an impasse over how to best deal with the long-term fiscal problems facing the United States. And of course, the elephant in the room in the debate is how to deal with entitlements — especially Medicare.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, attempted to tackle the entitlement problem last year with his “Path to Prosperity” proposal, which became the budget adopted by the Republican-controlled House. The plan would have cut spending by more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years and would have eventually paid off the national debt.
Though the proposal was smeared by Democrats, at the time the “Path to Prosperity” was the only credible plan to deal with budget-busting entitlements that either party had put forward. But as happens all too often in Washington when good ideas are introduced, it was stalled in the Senate and demagogued by Democrats.
However, Ryan is undeterred. Unlike so many in Washington, he is trying to head off the fiscal ticking time bomb that is Medicare and is still proposing reforms to get it under control before it is too late.
Ryan’s latest proposed reforms to Medicare, which have been brought forward in bipartisan fashion with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), would, over time, do away with the program’s “fee-for-service” model. Fred Barnes, writing at The Wall Street Journal, notes that the Ryan-Wyden plan would replace the old model by “creat[ing] a marketplace in which seniors have a fixed amount of money to buy health insurance.” The proposed reforms would offer additional help to poorer Americans and ensure that no Medicare recipient would be denied coverage because of their risk.
This is obviously a welcome breakthrough in the stalemate on entitlements. And it is one that, as Kaiser Health News pointed out in December, “could neutralize a political problem that has been plaguing Republicans.” Now that Ryan is working with Wyden, who is by no means a conservative, it has made the issue more amenable for his party in Congress and the candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
There is still a long road to haul on reforming Medicare, but a reasonable path forward has been put on the table. Congress and President Barack Obama should act on it. And they should remember that kicking the can down the road, as they have been for the last few years, only puts taxpayers at risk.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He provides regular commentary to Daily Caller readers.