Entitlement reform

I haven't been paying extremely close attention to the entitlement reform kerfuffle, so I won't comment substantively, at least for the time being. Let me just be meta for now and say that while I'm not worried (at least not yet) that a fight over social security benefits is in our immediate future, I'm at the same time uneasy about the politics of welcoming a bunch of Blue Dogs and Republicans to an entitlement reform summit. And I blanch every time anyone dignifies the idea that Social Security benefits need to be cut by playing host to them.

Still, Social Security was scarcely mentioned at today's event, and, viewing it in isolation from, say, Peter Orszag's past pronouncements, Obama et al. really do seem to be at pains to reframe entitlement reform as health reform.

Hopefully that's correct, and hopefully they succeed. But, there are still concerns. For instance, when Obama says "we will reinstate the pay-as-you-go rule", he's reiterating a pledge he made to Blue Dogs to keep his stimulus legislation alive in the House. But does that mean there will be no new stimulus measures? Even though his own chief of staff seems to acknowledge that the recovery bill on its own will be inadequate? I guess it depends in part on when Obama and the Dems plan on reinstituting paygo, and that remains totally unclear.

And then there's the fact that much of the media is both innumerate and incapable of dissociating the idea of entitlement reform from impoverishing old people ASAP. Here's what Obama said:

Now, I want to be very clear: While we are making important progress towards fiscal responsibility this year in this budget, this is just the beginning. In the coming years, we'll be forced to make more tough choices and do much more to address our long-term challenges, from the rising cost of health care that Peter described, which is the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far, to the long-term solvency of Social Security.

But here's how the AP's Liz Sidoti reported it:

He said he would reinstitute a pay-as-you-go rule that calls for spending reductions to match increases and would shun what he said were the past few years' "casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks." He called the long-term solvency of Social Security "the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far" and said reforming health care, including burgeoning entitlement programs, was a huge priority.

That's a particularly egregious twofer. Paygo only means matching increases with reductions if you've accepted the notion that the government can't raise taxes, and Obama very obviously did not say what Sidoti reported. But these are the waters Obama chose to swim in and he's going to be plagued by, at least, misperceptions like this as long as he insists on tackling "entitlement reform".