Turning off the entitlement-meltdown warning light

Democrats in Congress, led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, plan on a spending spree that will push budget deficits to a trillion dollars while an entitlement-system crash awaits us in the next two decades.  Until now, a House rule has forced the lower chamber each year to acknowledge the disaster awaiting the largest entitlement program by debating Medicare’s funding and direction.  Now, according to CQ Today (subscription required), Pelosi and the Democrats have a solution to Medicare’s collapse — change the rule to skip the debate:

House Democrats are planning to deal with one of their annual headaches early this year, using a rules package to turn off the Medicare “trigger” that each year forces an at least perfunctory debate on the entitlement program’s costs.

Buried in the package of operating rules that will govern the House in the 111th Congress is a provision saying the Medicare trigger “shall not apply.”

In a release accompanying the rules package, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., called the Medicare trigger “an ideologically-driven target based on a misleading measure of Medicare’s financial health.”

The trigger is part of the 2003 Medicare overhaul law that also created the prescription drug benefit. According to the law, if for two years in a row, 45 percent or more of Medicare’s funding comes from general tax revenues, the president has to submit — and Congress debate — legislation to slow excess spending over a seven-year period and restore fiscal stability to the program.

The trigger went into effect for the first time last year. President Bush submitted a proposal to cut spending which House Democrats promptly dismissed. They then killed the requirement for debate in 2008 with a rule similar to the one they plan to adopt Tuesday.

In an interesting twist, the rule change will still require Barack Obama to submit proposals to fix Medicare, as required by the statute.  The House will simply ignore them.  This anomaly will exist because Democrats won’t propose this as an amendment to the 2003 law, but only as a simple rule change, which they can use to govern only their own behavior.  They cannot use a rule change to let Obama off the hook.

Steny Hoyer says that ending the trigger “will allow Congress to consider all options for improving Medicare financing to provide a balanced and equitable solution.”  That’s exactly what the trigger prompts Congress to do.  Killing the Medicare trigger allows Congress to ignore Medicare and the looming financial crisis coming our way.  Hoyer, Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats in the House don’t want to be reminded that while they spend money like there’s no tomorrow in the 111th Session, tomorrow will eventually come — and their upcoming spending spree will have made the situation exponentially worse.

Basically, this is the same as fixing the ENGINE TROUBLE light on your car by covering it with electrical tape and then launching a 3,000 mile road trip.  What could go wrong?

Blowback