Experts worry: This fierce campaign battle over Medicare makes real reform less likely

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Bell, a former staff director for the Senate Budget Committee under Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), said he fears that Obama will win by demonizing efforts to curb Medicare growth, making it harder to find common ground on the issue in a second term.

“My sense is that this is going to be a referendum, all right. But for people like me, who are really concerned about debt trends, the outcome will be a step backwards,” he said…

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who has been warning of the dangers of a rising tide of debt for years, said the modern political process makes it nearly impossible for politicians to have a rational policy debate in the heated final weeks of a national campaign.

“We’re trying to solve some of the most complex policy dilemmas in history with an increasingly ADD nation,” he said. “It’s an in­cred­ibly tough challenge.”

But he said both parties should strive for a do-no-harm approach, in which they don’t allow their rhetoric to be so strident that they cannot make tough choices after the election.