So This is Hysteria

According to the New Republic's Jonathan Chait, the nation's capital is in the grip of "entitlement hysteria":

Those afflicted with entitlement hysteria are identifiable not by the realization that big social programs will need a fix--which is widely understood-- but by the urgency and gravity of their pleas.

This has to be the lowest standard for hysteria I've ever heard. By this yardstick, the annual briefing for employees on our retirement plan qualifies as a riot. Personally I think hysteria requires something more dramatic. Like an outbreak of looting.

But Chait makes a couple points worth considering. One is that there are plenty of other problems out there with consequences just as dire. I wouldn't deny that for a moment. I'd hope the nation's leaders can work on more than one problem at a time. The consequences of the long-term fiscal problem are pretty dire, too.

The other point is his argument that "one of the oddities of the entitlement hysterics is that they are far more obsessed with the minor problems of Social Security than with the massive problems of Medicare." His argument is that Medicare is in far worse shape than Social Security, that Medicare's problems are linked to health care overall, so why not solve health care instead?

He's absolutely right that Medicare is by far the bigger problem and will hit much sooner. But I'm not sure who he thinks is ignoring that (possibly apart from Tim Russert). All of the Facing Up partners would agree. So does the GAO, the CBO and OMB.

And lots of people besides Chait also want to fix something else before tackling the long-term fiscal crisis. Let's fix health care. Let's fix the political system. Let's fix the tax system. Do that and the fiscal situation solves itself. It's an important argument, because these are all real problems. The problem with that strategy, of course, is that there's no consensus on how to fix those problems either. And while we're struggling to solve these problems, Medicare keeps heading to an implosion. What happens if, God help us, we try to fix the "real" problem and fail? Then we're left with no health care solution, no public engagement on options to fix Medicare, deflated political will to tackle big problems -- and no more time.

Then it'll be time to get hysterical.