Readers are familiar with the moniker “third rail.” In political discourse, it refers to those preciously few issues that are so untouchable that the mere talk of change, alteration or revision carries with it what amounts to a political death penalty.
There is general agreement in Washington, D.C., that reform of federal entitlements leads the brief list. The most recent example being the 2011 temporary coalition of former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon intended to secure a more sustainable Medicare program. Here, all was good and fine for a fast minute before the Democratic Party realized its number one nuclear weapon was in the process of being compromised. And that was that. Suffice to say that that now twelve-year-old effort was the last semi-serious, bipartisan attempt to control entitlement spending we will see for the foreseeable future.
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