EDITORIAL: Big budgets prompt loud critics, but no one talks about entitlement reform

Feb. 14--President Barack Obama has submitted an eye-popping $4.1 trillion budget that addresses the troubled reality confronting Americans today: A crumbling infrastructure, an untrained and unprepared workforce, looming environmental catastrophe, a broken immigration system and rising threats from domestic and foreign extremists.

The president is correct that more dollars need to be invested if America has any hope of overcoming these big challenges. But the president is woefully mistaken if he thinks Congress will agree to this level of spending, along with net tax increases of $2.8 trillion, in an election season where big government serves as the shorthand reference to everything bad happening in this country.

The president has handed the gift of distraction to his Republican critics. Because of this budget, no one will talk about the elephant in the room: entitlement reform.

Expect no shortage of speechifying about the tax-and-spend, big-budget Democrats. They will point to ever-rising deficits, which are forecast to total $6 trillion in coming decades.

They'll get no argument from this newspaper. Deficits pass to future generations the burden of paying for the services Americans are enjoying today. And yes, the bigger government gets, the more inefficient and wasteful it becomes.

Politicians will point a finger at others and promise that if you only vote for them, these spendthrift ways will end. Believe them at your peril.

The truth is, scores of expensive, top-priority problems need to be addressed immediately. Yet two-thirds of the budget is already spoken for because of mandatory entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. Defense spending takes up most of the remaining funding.

All those other important priorities that politicians talk about -- taking care of our veterans, improving K-12 education, boosting border security or fixing the nation's decaying roads system -- must be handled using a measly 13 percent of the budget, according to Heritage Foundation analysts.

For all the grandiose promises that politicians from both major parties make about fixing what's wrong, the simple truth is that there's not enough left to accomplish what needs to be done.

Until Congress and the next president tackle entitlement reform, that two-thirds portion of the budget will only continue to gobble up the lion's share of your tax dollars. And those of your kids. And their kids. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has tried to get his GOP colleagues to engage, but he also has failed.

For all their talk of austerity, Republicans cannot and will not come up with an expenditure-cutting plan that can fix the budgetary black hole caused by entitlements. Nor can the Democrats dig us out with proposals such as bigger, better national health insurance coverage.

So be wary of politicians selling snake oil. If they don't have a plan for entitlements, they're a part of the problem, not the solution.

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