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Entitlement Reform and the GOP: Goodbye to All That?
Not much talk about the national debt during this GOP primary season. Oh, there’s the obligatory — passing — reference to it during speeches and debates, but little more. Indeed, GOP tax plans would make the debt much worse by trillions over the next decade and beyond.
Now maybe one reason there’s less debt talk is that budget deficits are way down, and the long-term fiscal outlook improved. On the latter front, the WSJ’s Grep Ip highlights a new study — co-authored by former CBO boss Doug Elmendorf — that forecasts the US debt-GDP ratio won’t hit 100 percent until 2032 vs. the CBO’s 2009 forecast of 2023. (Thank low interest rates and slower healthcare inflation for that.)
But maybe another reason Republicans aren’t talking about the debt is that it’s hard to do so without also talking about deep Medicare and Social Security reform. And while entitlement reform was a pretty hot topic early in the Obama presidency, passion on the right has waned. Reforming entitlements is out, defending them is in. As Donald Trump has put it: “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want [it] to be cut.” Here’s WSJ columnist Holman Jenkins: