In separate press conferences, President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that talks over the aptly called “big deal” had completely broken down. It is hard to know what this actually means because virtually all of the negotiations are happening behind closed doors in private meetings. We do not even know the true status of the deal, backchannel talks could still be happening and these announcements could be mere posturing. However, we do have a somewhat nebulous list of broad options that were being discussed.

Obama has said many times, and there have been consistent reports confirming, that changes to entitlement programs were on the negotiation table. This is an important step in the negotiation process, and it solidifies my opinion of Obama as a primarily moderate Democrat. Despite this supposed compromise, it is unclear if his willingness to put entitlements on the table is actually a willingness to really reform entitlement programs so that they are made fundamentally sustainable. Raising the age of retirement and other similar reforms are like duct tape on a leaky pipe, and do not offer the kind of long term change we need. Nonetheless, even without substantial structural changes in entitlement programs the amount of cuts that are on the table, and our desperate need for them, makes this deal one Republicans should not be walking away from.

Potentially cutting programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is unpopular, among both Democratic politicians and the public at-large alike. But there is no way to be serious about spending reduction without going after entitlement programs. They make up too much of the budget to ignore, and are growing at a rapid and unsustainable rate.

Not touching entitlements would mean not even touching half of government spending. It means letting these programs alone exceed government revenues in less than 20 years. Most of all it means letting programs that were designed in the 1940s continue without major fundamental changes in how we deliver services to Americans. Entitlement reform is an issue in which many Democrats take a turn at mindlessly clinging onto the past without considering that there might be better, fairer, and more efficient alternatives. Obama’s willingness to face the massive political resistance against even touching the “big three” demonstrates seriousness about deficit reduction that cannot be argued with. But some still try to.

Conservative commentators such as Charles Krauthammer have been consistently criticizing President Obama for being sanctimonious. Krauthammer makes a good, and true point that Obama was not the one who originally pushed for deficit reduction, and that it was the Republicans who made this a possibility. Now the President is calling for a “big deal” and blaming the Republicans for not compromising to his idea of what should be in a deal. Also, when put into context of the rest of his domestic policy reforms it seems almost ludicrous that Obama is now transforming himself into some sort of deficit hawk. But it is the role of the moderate not to take a hard line, or even ideologically consistent road every single year. At the end of the day, the fundamental aspects of the big deal that have been proposed are good for America. Reducing our deficit means we can obtain a surplus and eventually start paying down our debt. That is money that could be otherwise be education dollars, infrastructure dollars, or even tax cuts. The closing of “tax loopholes,” and a small increase in top marginal tax rates are not my ideal tax reforms for generating revenue, but these are tenable in such a compromise. We should not question the authenticity of Obama’s desire to cut the deficit – we should just do it.

Read more posts like this on my blog, Bootleg Insight.