The September 9-10, 2017, edition of the Wall Street Journal contained an interview with John F. Cogan who has just written "The High Cost of Good Intentions" about entitlements in the U.S. There's an often repeated truism that holds that once an entitlement is established it is impossible to remove.
So it was most enlightening to learn that there are actually some entitlements that were removed. Mr. Cogan's recalled how four presidents actually did reduce or at least slow entitlements: Grover Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Why Entitlements Keep Growing and ... (Paywalled).
Franklin D. Roosevelt --
"Within seven days in office," Mr. Cogan says, "FDR asked Congress to repeal the disability entitlements to World War I, Philippine War, and Boxer Rebellion veterans. Congress gave him that authority, and within a year, he'd knocked nearly 400,000 veterans off the pension rolls; By the time we got to World War II, the benefit rolls were a third lower than they were when he took office."
Grover Cleveland --
The irrepressible Cleveland "started vetoing these private [pension] bills right away" - 220 of them in his first term-which explains why he still holds the presidential record for most vetoes.
Ronald Reagan --
"There's no president who has undertaken entitlement reform in as comprehensive a way." Reagan "fought a very good fight and he slowed the growth of entitlements like no other president ever had." He achieved significant reductions in 1981 and 1982, and then "battled to preserve those changes through the rest of his two terms. The growth of entitlements during his time in office is the slow est of any modern administration." Still, this striking accomplishment "ultimately only slowed, and did not reduce, the aggregate financial burden of entitlements."
Bill Clinton --
Mr. Cogan also gives an honorable mention to Bill Clinton for his welfare-reform plan. Mr. Clinton's was "a fairly narrow reform compared to the broad swath of entitlements, but history will show that it's one of the most successful reforms that's ever been achieved. The reform not only reduced welfare's burden on taxpayers, it has also benefited the recipients, whom the old unreformed program had been harming."
Here's why it won't happen again anytime soon. The three things needed for real reform are a president who feel strongly about it, a public that agrees, and a cooperative legislature. It doesn't take a sharp observer to conclude that none of those conditions are present today. So voters barely bat an eye when President Trump advocates raising the debt ceiling.
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