But there’s another reason for the squeeze on liberal-favored programs: the inexorable growth in entitlement spending as health-care costs grow and the population ages. Mandatory spending will reach 14 percent of GDP by 2022, compared with an average of 10.2 percent over the past 40 years. Social Security, Medicare and the other major health-care programs will account for more than half of all federal spending 10 years from now, CBO says. That takes into account the recent good news of slower-than-expected growth in health-care costs, and it assumes Medicare cuts that are unlikely to be implemented.

The guts of these programs have to be preserved, as liberals rightly argue. Social Security keeps the elderly out of poverty. Medicare ensures that they get health care, and Medicaid and Obamacare should come close to extending that promise to all Americans.

But while federal programs aimed at the young and the poor — and at investments in the future — are slated to dwindle, the entitlement programs are on track to give ever richer benefits to a growing older generation, some of whom don’t need all that much help.

Social Security, for example, is designed not just to provide a floor for all seniors but to give each succeeding generation more generous benefits than the one before. That’s a nice idea but one the country can no longer afford, at least not without robbing the future. That’s why Obama proposed changes to the Social Security cost-of-living index, designed to protect the vulnerable.