The tsunami is upon us.

Since the Reagan era, budget experts have warned that without changes to Social Security and Medicare, a massive spending spree would ensue as baby boomers claimed their benefits and health care prices rose. Eventually, that swell would engulf the economy into a demographic tsunami, as economist Robert Reischauer called it when he headed the Congressional Budget Office. For former presidents and legislators, the crisis seemed far away: the early 2020s, into the 2030s.

That’s natural now. So it couldn’t be a worse time for President Biden and the Republicans to agree, as they have, that these safety net programs are off the table as they face government debt reduction in the coming months.

Social Security and Medicare are among the biggest drivers of US debt, now larger than any part of the economy since World War II. Negotiations to leave out the two programs are not serious. The Republican pledge to balance the budget is unlikely enough; without major changes to Social Security and Medicare, it’s absurd. Meanwhile, both will continue untouched on their way to insolvency, in 2028 for Medicare and 2034 for Social Security, it is estimated.

On Thursday, Biden takes the first step in the debt dance of the year, when he sends Congress his budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October. Hell proposes tinkering with Medicare to keep it solvent through the 2050s, as part of $3 trillion in total deficit reductions over 10 years, by raising taxes on wealthy Americans rather than reining in benefits. He knows it’s an offer Republicans will refuse.

Because you know, tax increases for the rich.

So, once again, a president and Congress will postpone for another year the inevitable: a deal to strengthen the retirement safety net for future generations before insolvency forces general spending cuts.

But spare Biden the disgrace he would otherwise deserve for leadership neglect. Until Republicans resign their tired, irresponsible ones opposition to new taxes, he is right that neither Medicare nor Social Security should come under the knife.

Tax increases

other

cuts should be part of the mix. It’s simple math. But it also means a shared sacrifice.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a recent speech that of all the dangers we face, the greatest threat to our future is our national debt.

the

biggest threat? If McCarthy really believed that, he would have quit the anti-tax absolutism. He would take some responsibility on behalf of his party, especially for the trillions it had added to the pile by repeatedly cutting taxes. But then he wouldn’t be the speaker for long.

So McCarthy blamed the Democrats’ runaway spending

,

in his debt speech. He added without irony that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table.

Republican anti-spending mantra ignores the fact that tax cuts are just as likely to add to debt as spending. They continue to claim that tax cuts are different, that they pay for themselves, despite 40 years of experience with the tax cuts of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump proving otherwise.

Even the Bush vice president admitted that: when Dick Cheney famously said that Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter, he justified the Bush administration’s second round of sweeping tax cuts amid concerns about growing budget deficits. (Remember, Bush inherited a surplus.)

Unlike many tax cuts, some government spending on infrastructure pays for itself in whole or in part, giving the taxpayer a return on investment, according to studies.

And the Republicans’ tirades believe how much they like federal spending a

lot

for the military, farm and business grants, home roads and bridges, disaster relief, and much, much more. And their voters love the generosity, too, even as they participate in the Democrats’ damned big spending.

True fiscal conservatives balance spending

other

taxes, as the old Republicans did. When expenses are consistently higher than income

S

as it has done annually for most of our lives, regardless of who is in power advocating for taxes to restore balance. Instead, the Republicans cut them.

When Democrats created the Affordable Care Act, they paid for it with taxes on companies that profit from serving millions of newly insured Americans. Business groups supported the trade-off. By contrast, when Bush and a Republican-majority Congress created Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, they passed the cost onto the federal bill. In cahoots with drugmakers, they even banned Medicare from negotiating lower prices, a ban that Biden and the Democrats lifted last year. (His new budget calls for expanding Medicare’s power to negotiate

medicine costs.

)

Under Trump, Republicans remained largely silent as debt mounted

Through

$8 trillion. Three times Congress raised the nation’s debt limit at his request, so the US

nation

could continue to borrow to pay his bills. Republicans don’t set conditions.

However, with a Democrat in the White House, they have resurfaced as deficit hawks, demanding spending cuts to balance the budget before supporting the debt limit increase this summer. But with Social Security and Medicare out of bounds, along with defense spending and interest on the debt, only 15% of the budget is left for just about everything else the government does, and voters expect it to do. According to the Center Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, 85% of that small portion is of

Budget the expenses

pie would have to be cut to balance the budget in a decade.

Not even the Republicans would vote for that, cutting support for it

air traffic control, food and drug safety, medical research, education aid, homeland security and so on. And they don’t vote for taxes either. That raises the specter of impasse and devastating bankruptcy of the world’s economic superpower.

That’s not the

the same

tsunami that fiscal forecasters predicted. But it would still be a disaster. A man-made one.

@jackiekcalmes