Samuelson: Insolvency? Bring it on.

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson writes that if Congress only addresses entitlements in a crisis, the sooner the crisis comes the better:

Like General Motors and Chrysler, we continue self-defeating habits because we can—temporarily. These are not easy issues. But procrastination is a bad policy. The longer changes are postponed, the more wrenching they will be. The hurt for retirees and taxpayers alike will only grow with time. Social Security last faced a forcing event in 1983, when a dwindling trust fund prodded Congress to make changes. The counterintuitive lesson: a "crisis" is just what we need.

A couple thoughts. First, I was recently at a dinner with a retired very senior Member of Congress, who – like Samuelson – predicted that it would take a crisis to spur Congress to action. Congress, he said, is like a high schooler waiting until the night before the exam to study. My question – and for better or worse I voiced it – is whether we have a right to expect our elected representatives to approach issues of national importance with greater seriousness than a teenager devotes to Friday's math quiz.

Second, Samuelson's column brought back thoughts of President Bush's reform efforts in 2005, where he spent a great deal of time talking about the problem of Social Security solvency before he began to discuss reforms. A constant cry from the left (and from much of the press) was that Bush was "crisis mongering," claiming a crisis where none existed. Let's leave aside that Bush rarely if every called Social Security a crisis, while President Clinton regularly did so – and more recently, so has then-Senator Obama. My question was, are we supposed to wait until it's a crisis to act? Because at that point it would be, well, a crisis? Shouldn't we act before a crisis comes, and wasn't that exactly what President Bush was advocating?

All rhetorical questions, obviously, but perhaps still worth asking.