Real clear politics

Thank God my personal life is too scandalous for me to pursue a career in public service; I'd be a terrible politician (I can't keep my mouth shut and love to tell people when they're wrong) and, more pointedly, I hate politics. Though at the same time, I'm addicted to political coverage. What is especially frustrating right now is that, as far as I can tell, there is not one solitary politician in this country who is willing to talk about what actually matters.

Maybe you wonder what I'm referring to. The deficit? Job creation? Health insurance reform? National security? Global warming? Whether the President is, in fact, a natural-born American citizen?

All of those things are important, except for the last which is too silly to bear mentioning. No, what actually matters is entitlements reform: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Plus, our out-of-control military spending.

The deficit, about which the political establishment is now shrieking its empty little head off, has almost nothing to do with the stimulus or bailouts. It exists because of the obligations the government has taken on to pay for the well-being and health care of elderly Americans after they retire.

Unfortunately, there are a lot more elderly Americans today than there were when these programs were designed. And they are what is driving us towards fiscal ruin.

The solution is simple: decrease expenditures by cutting benefits or raising the retirement age, or increase revenue, which means raising taxes. Or do both - for example, by raising the retirement age to 72, the age by which most Americans kick the bucket, and simultaneously raising the Social Security taxation cap for the wealthy.

The health care insurance reform debate is nothing but a shadow-play substitute for a debate over entitlement reform; no one really cares if several million Americans don't have health insurance, since most of them don't vote. The problem is that the government's obligation to pay for Medicare is fast outstripping its ability to do so. Someday in the future, the entire federal budget will be consumed by two things: buying prescription drugs for the elderly, and paying for our enormously expensive military.

Of course, no one has the courage to tackle this problem because, as we saw last summer, the slightest hint of cuts to Medicare bring out crowds of elderly voters, ready to fight anyone who even thinks about cutting their entitlements. And as for cutting military spending? That also looks unlikely.