This is merely strategic positioning for the bigger battles of 2011...just how BIG will the cuts be to move the budget toward balance.
Then again, maybe, just maybe the dims ARE stupid enough to advocate a tax increase on every single person resident in the USA.
One can hope, right?
Congress has already told the deficit reduction commission that it is not allowed to look at SS cuts. But the fiscal hole in Medicare is 5 times as large. A fair and balanced assessment of the situation would provide him a full range of options, i.e.:
1) a package of adjustments to Medicare eligibility (means testing? higher retirement age?), benefits (change to a defined contribution instead of defined benefit?) and payment reforms (the rest of the market long ago shifted away from open-ended fee-for-service: it’s about time Medicare caught up) that would reduce costs enough to eliminate the deficit;
2) a companion package of revenue increases that could do the same;
3) an “al la carte” menu of cost reductions and revenue increases from which to design whatever mix of cost reductions and revenue increases is viewed as sensible.
My fear is that 1) will be considered a non-starter and that most of the commission’s focus will be on 2), trying to design a package of “acceptable” revenue increases so that cost cutting isn’t even needed.