I don't think that halting the cost of living increase but keeping the inflation increase for say five years in all that crazy, Nor do I think bumping the age that you receive social security is all that unreasonable. To do any of those things without cutting the military and some of the domestic civilian repression bureaucracy (TSA, ATF and domestic spying) does seem unreasonable. The cost of financing the budget is going to continue to take up a greater portion of the budget if we don't get to work on it. Some austerity will help assure that we can keep a social safety net in the future.
I don't necessarily agree with the author about this being so egregious that it makes Obama the WPE. However, it's despicable that military spending and medical care costs aren't in front of this. They could significantly improve the budget, and the second would improve the lives of Americans at the same time. Just allowing Medicare to price negotiate for drugs could account for 50B+ per year. Not to mention the absurd costs payed for medical products and services. People pay into these social programs, and the medical and military industrial complexes enjoy the largess at their expense. We don't need austerity, we need sanity in our spending..
I agree, I just don't see meaningful cutbacks happening to military overspending. We'll see. I bet that the balance falls on social programs and any military spending that gets cut gets put back in. Too bad we can't reap greater savings by utilizing single payer health care or a similar model. That ship has sailed for the time being.