Charles Krauthammer is absolutely right that Republicans must call President Obama’s bluff on the debt-limit vote. I suggested that the House GOP pass $2 trillion in cuts tied to a $2 trillion debt increase, thus handing the matter over to the Senate and the president and refusing to budge.
Krauthammer has the same idea, but with $500 billion in cuts and a $500 billion debt increase. That would certainly be better than Senator McConnell’s chicken-out plan, and it would have the advantage of being so modest in size that I think it would ultimately get large support in the Senate from moderates.
The cuts–small “trims” really–could be taken right from Obama’s own Fiscal Commission report. The table below illustrates how modest and limited are the reforms needed to hit $500 billion in savings over 10 years. Indeed, the data from the commission only covers a nine-year period and includes just some of the proposed entitlement savings.
| Obama Fiscal Commission Entitlement Trims | $Billions |
| Trim Health Care Subsidies | |
| Reduce subsidies for medical education | $60 |
| Expand Medicare cost sharing | $110 |
| Enact tort reform | $17 |
| Reduce Medicaid tax gaming | $44 |
| Reform Tricare | $38 |
| Trim Social Security Growth | |
| Increase benefits by chained CPI | $89 |
| Trim Growth in Other Entitlements | |
| Increase other entitlements by chained CPI | $43 |
| Reform federal retirement benefits | $73 |
| Reduce farm subsidies | $10 |
| Reduce student loan interest subsidies | $43 |
| Total Trims, 2012-2020 | $527 |
It would be blindingly obvious to most voters that Obama would be responsible for a debt default if he couldn’t bring himself to sign such modest cuts that were proposed by his own fiscal commission. Then, when the government runs up against the debt limit again five months from now, the GOP should have another package of cuts ready to be passed. This next time they could perhaps focus on discretionary program terminations, some of which I’ve proposed here.