Gregg's plan would exact fiscal pain, setting new targets for federal spending and requiring that Congress make cuts with the aim of virtually balancing the budget by 2012. It also could inflict political pain, because Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs are among the areas that could be hit.
The Gregg plan would not require reductions in Social Security, which would be exempted from automatic across-the-board cuts, but it would establish a bipartisan commission that could recommend changes and even cutbacks in the program for older Americans.
"It appears that this proposal could provide a fast-track process for dramatic cuts in Social Security," said Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. "That is unacceptable."
Spending on America's big-three entitlements - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - is currently at about $3 billion a day.
I'll say it again: $3 billion a day.
And it's growing at about an 8% yearly clip.
Folks like Senator Conrad spend a lot of time complaining about budget deficits, yet whenever anyone suggests reigning in spending on the programs that cost us the most people like him set their jaw and refuse to consider it.
A reasonable person can conclude that $3 billion/day spending growing at an 8% clip is an unsustainable burden on the American taxpayers, and yet people like Conrad expect us to carry that burden.
It just doesn't make sense to me.