Moreover, critics of personal accounts for Social Security have pointed to the decline in the stock market over the last few years as an argument against allowing younger workers to privately invest a portion of their Social Security taxes. Yet as the new Trustee's Report shows, the same poor economy that hurts the stock market, hurts Social Security's ability to pay its benefits.

In the end, there are only three possible solutions to Social Security's problems. Taxes could be raised (and the Social Security payroll tax would have to be nearly doubled to keep the program afloat). Benefits could be cut. Or younger workers could be allowed to invest privately. We can have an honest debate about which of those options is the best choice. But, as the Trustee's Report makes clear, we cannot afford to avoid that debate.

Health care reform should be about empowering patients, not about how much increased government control the health care industry is willing to accept.

Moreover, any promised health care savings that come out of today's meeting are likely to prove illusory in the face of increased government regulation, subsidies, and interference that will almost certainly drive up the cost (and decrease the quality) of health care.

But this seeming consensus should not be allowed to hide the fundamental disagreements over how to reform health care. The Obama administration and its allies mainly seek greater government control over one-seventh of the U.S. economy and some of our most important, personal, and private decisions. They favor individual and employer mandates, increased insurance regulation, middle-class subsidies, and a government-run system in competition with private insurance. On the other side are those who seek free market reforms and more consumer-centered health care.

These differences are profound and important. They cannot and should not be papered over by easy talk of bipartisanship.

Certainly there is widespread agreement that health care needs reform. It costs too much. Too many people lack health insurance. And quality, while highest in the world, is too often uneven.

But the devil is in the details. How does President Obama plan to expand coverage, increase covered treatments and control costs, all at the same time? The wrong answer is likely to mean fewer choices for patients, decreased quality of care, and an increased burden on American taxpayers. And, while President Obama gave us no details last night, the direction that he appears to be taking is extremely troublesome.

From what we can determine so far, Obamacare will be based on four pillars: 1) mandates -— both for employers and individuals; 2) subsidies for the middleclass; 3) increased insurance regulation; and 4) a government-run health care plan, like Medicare, that will compete with private insurance. The result will be government control over one-seventh of the US economy and some of the most important, personal, and private decisions in our lives.

We know from the failure of national health care systems around the world, and the inefficiency, high cost, and poor quality of government-run health care systems here at home, that that is not the type of health care reform that we need. Real health care reform should empower health care consumers, not government bureaucrats.

President Obama is right. We need to reform health care. But not the way he wants to do it.

For a brief moment it appeared that Obama was willing to take on one of his party's most prized shibboleths: the idea that there is nothing wrong with Social Security and Medicare that repealing the Bush tax cuts won't fix. But faced with a rebellion by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the net-roots left, it is clear the president now plans to put off any serious effort to reform those programs.

But facts are stubborn things. The combined unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare top $100 trillion. Indeed, without reform, Social Security will begin running a deficit within eight years, by 2017. And Medicare faces a deficit even sooner. If current trends continue, Medicare and social Security, along with Medicaid, will consume 28 percent of GDP by mid-century.

Obama has the opportunity to show that he truly represents a change from Washington politics as usual. If he retreats from obvious challenges so easily, he will fail.