It was widely reported that Mitch McConnell recently said the GOP would be looking at entitlement cuts during the next Congress. A fact-checker for the WaPo, however, says that McConnell went on to insist that any such cuts would require bipartisan support. Should we take comfort from that?
In the long run, quite the opposite. By way of background, while the GOP rank-and-file clearly don’t support entitlement cuts, the leadership does. That is a product both of CL ideology and the wishes of the donor class. A few prominent GOP members (Paul Ryan, mostly) have made their reputations for honesty by being open about this; the rest rely on spin and lies to square the circle with their constituents. It is doubtful that many of them can be trusted to vote properly when push comes to shove.
McConnell’s comments suggest that he understands this, and has a different, long-range plan; he wants the Democrats to share the blame for the cuts. No Democrat is going to want to cut Social Security or Medicare, so they will have to be tricked or coerced. How can that be done? By waiting for a funding crisis to come and then refusing to raise taxes to resolve it. The cuts will then come by default or as part of a package to save the program that will have bipartisan support. Either way, blaming the Democrats will make sense to the electorate.