In early March, the Biden White House released a fact sheet previewing his budget proposals for Medicare, advertised as dramatically extending program solvency without cutting any benefits or raising costs for its participants. But to call the proposals unhelpful would be a severe understatement. In reality, they amount to an accounting shell game: They would improve the appearance of Medicare’s troubled finances without meaningfully addressing the actual problem.

The president’s framing also aims to extract political advantage from Medicare’s difficulties, positioning himself to attack any political opponent who tries to responsibly address Medicare’s runaway cost growth. The White House has rendered it prohibitively difficult for congressional leaders in either party to repair the situation at any time in the near future—and that’s a dynamic that can only undermine the public’s interest in a stable and secure Medicare program.

[I’ll be fair here — as Charles usually is — and note that Biden’s not the only one in DC that plays shell games on entitlements. Both parties do as well by ganging up to excoriate anyone who presents a policy solution to the debt cliff of entitlements. Biden demagogues worse than most on it, though, so I’m happy to let Charles take aim at the president for this insipid posturing. — Ed]