The essential budget question is how much we allow federal spending on the elderly to crowd out other national priorities. All else is subordinate. Yet, our “leaders” don’t debate this question with candor or intelligence. We have a generation of politicians cowed and controlled by AARP. We need to ask how much today’s programs constitute a genuine “safety net” to protect the vulnerable (which is good) and how much they simply subsidize retirees’ private pleasures.

Our politicians make perfunctory bows to entitlement reform and consider that they’ve discharged their duty, even if nothing changes. We need to recognize that federal retiree programs often represent middle-class welfare. Past taxes were never “saved” to pay future benefits. We need to ask the hard questions: Who deserves help and who doesn’t? Because Social Security and Medicare are so intertwined in our social fabric, changing them could never be easy. But the fact that we’ve evaded the choices for so long is why the present budget impasse has been so tortuous and why, if we continue our avoidance, there will be others.