Democrats are happy to let Paul Ryan (left) and John Boehner (right) grapple over their plan. Has Obama set GOP entitlement trap?

Senior congressional Democrats were plenty nervous on the eve of President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget presentation, fretting that Obama would suddenly gain his nerve and decide to take on the issue that editorial pages ceaselessly debate but elected officials are wary to touch — entitlement reform.

They needn’t have worried. White House officials assured their friends on the Hill that Obama wouldn’t broach the subject, Democrats told POLITICO, and on Monday when he presented his budget the president conspicuously avoided addressing entitlements, despite citing them as the country’s major fiscal problem.


Obama’s decision to avoid entitlements was instantly deemed as irresponsible. Progressive blogger Andrew Sullivan interpreted the message as “screw you, suckers” to future generations. The usually Obama-friendly Washington Post editorial page pithily described him as “Punter-in-Chief.” Republicans expressed outrage.

But for Hill Democrats — so often at odds with Obama for the past two years — this omission was no sin. It was a gift, in their view, the setting of a political trap for a Republican Party divided between conservatives pushing for major changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and a GOP leadership wary of the political peril of tinkering with Americans’ retirement security.

With Obama refusing to offer his own plan for entitlements, congressional Republicans — as the president noted — rushed in to fill the vacuum.

“I was glad to see yesterday Republican leaders say, ‘How come you didn’t talk about entitlements?’” said Obama at his news conference Tuesday, repeatedly rebuffing reporters’ attempts to get him to offer his own entitlement reforms. “I think that’s progress.”

And, in fact, Republican leaders have ruefully agreed to unveil their own list of “significant, not around-the-edges” reforms, according to a GOP aide.

“They are suckers,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide of the House GOP plans to release the first detailed proposals to reduce entitlement spending. “They have painted themselves into a corner.”

Under pressure from about 100 conservatives to tackle the issue — possibly through a new privatization plan that was part of the party’s midterm blueprint — the GOP leadership knows it is taking the first bite of a wormy political apple.

“None of the options polls well,” lamented one Republican insider.

What Hill Democrats see in the current debate is the possibility of a replay of the 2006 fight over George W. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, a move that spooked voters and helped fuel big Democratic gains in the midterms that year.

Democrats are likely to portray whatever the GOP produces as the Son of Privatization, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) previewed that strategy Tuesday night, saying the Republicans' “idea of entitlement reform will be privatizing Social Security and turning Medicare into a voucher system.”

At his press conference to sell the budget, Obama cast his decision to dodge entitlement reforms as a form of leadership, saying it would have been counterproductive to float his plan past the waiting cannons of a GOP-controlled House, likely to blast away at anything he suggests, especially tax increases.

When asked whether he was abrogating his responsibility to lead, Obama replied, “This is not a matter of you go first or I go first. This is a matter of … ultimately getting in that boat at the same time so it doesn’t tip over.”

But Obama isn’t anywhere near the water’s edge yet.

“Why should the president go first in an entitlement debate with a Congress that has already ruled out raising taxes to deal with the deficits [in entitlement funding]?” asked veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who thinks Obama won’t tackle the issue head-on until after the 2012 election. “It would be suicide. It would actually be bad policy.”

The likelihood of a bipartisan deal, while not entirely dead, seems far-fetched unless both sides agree to a moratorium on entitlement attacks ads, an exceedingly remote possibility.

“The White House has decided to play rope-a-dope for a while in hopes that the GOP punches itself, improving Obama’s bargaining position,” said Brookings scholar Bill Galston, a former adviser to Bill Clinton. “The problem is that you have to eventually address this … and in the meantime, you are going to get called out for a default of presidential leadership.”

Most Democrats, with the exception of a handful of senators working on a bipartisan debt proposal, have no intention of jumping into the debate anytime soon. When asked what Obama should do when the GOP releases its proposal, one Democratic aide, snapped: “Nothing.”

They’re more than happy to watch House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — who favors significant reductions to entitlements — grapple over their as-yet-unwritten plan.

Still, Republicans predict the issue will come back to haunt Obama as he portrays himself as Washington’s only grown-up willing to tackle problems. “Every Republican candidate in 2012 is going to bring this up,” said one GOP operative.

“Why did you duck?” Ryan asked Obama’s Budget Director Jack Lew at a hearing Tuesday. “You know the drivers of our debt are entitlement programs, and yet you do nothing to address that.”

The Post editorial writers, seldom in line with the House GOP, concurred: “If Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn could sign on to a deficit-reduction plan that included raising tax revenue, is it too much to ask for such bravery from Mr. Obama? And if Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin could sign on to a plan that included raising the Social Security retirement age, is it too much to ask for more from Mr. Obama than an airy set of 'principles for reform?' Sadly, the answer appears to be yes.”

More than anything, Obama’s quiescence chafes against his image as a president who confronts tough challenges other chief executives dodge.

That theme was picked up by several of Obama’s questioners Tuesday, with one reporter pointedly asking the president why he didn’t embrace a single proposal from his own deficit commission, which proposed steep cuts, tax increases and increasing the Social Security retirement age.

“Part of the challenge here is that this town — let’s face it, you guys are pretty impatient,” Obama said. “If something doesn’t happen today, then the assumption is it’s just not going to happen, right? … [T]he fiscal commission put out a framework. I agree with much of the framework; I disagree with some of the framework.”

Instead of offering specific proposals, Obama suggested a political path, arguing that bipartisan deals on stopgap funding measures and the 2012 budget — still distant prospects — could pave the way for a longer-term partnership.

“I’m confident we can get Social Security done in the same way that Ronald Reagan and [late Speaker] Tip O’Neill were able to get it done, by parties coming together, making some modest adjustments,” Obama said. “I think we can avoid slashing benefits, and I think we can make it stable and stronger for not only this generation but for the next generation.”