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Long ago, my then-colleague Sam Rosenfeld coined the term the "Pain Caucus" for the peculiar strain of establishment wise men (and women) who seem to think the only truly courageous policy reform is the policy reform that causes immense pain to people who aren't them. Watching a group of chin-strokers on Capital Gang pat each other on the back for their courage in championing cuts in Medicare, Rosenfeld wrote:
This belief on the part of the centrist liberals on the panel is not, of course, grounded in empirical reality, but rather a particular, long-outdated conception of what responsible policymaking entails and what kind of political action should be deemed courageous...The pain caucus included such stalwarts of independence and bipartisan sobriety as John Breaux and Bob Kerrey, the latter of whom in particular made something of a fetish out of championing policy prescriptions that maximized the ill effects on those dependent on the support of federal entitlement programs. For his efforts he was rewarded with a reputation for fiscal responsibility and political courage by the establishment Beltway press...Fortunately for the Democrats, most of the self-styled pain caucusers in their midst have retired. But the pundit class that encouraged their "eat your vegetables" temperament is still around.These are the benefit cutters and means testers and age raisers -- folks who loudly champion a set of painfully austere entitlement reforms despite the fact that the government's fiscal worries are a) not about Social Security and b) driven by health care spending, not Medicare promises. It is, in other words, an aesthetic posture more than a policy argument, but it's utterly pervasive in Washington.
