While Congress and the White House continue to consider economic recovery proposals designed to bring our country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, some deficit hawks are promoting the notion that the short-term costs of the economic downturn and the recovery plan ought to be linked to long-term reductions in Social Security and Medicare. They have characterized expenditures for these critical programs as representing an “entitlement crisis” or a “long-term fiscal crisis.”

Contrary to the anti-entitlement crowd’s rhetoric, we cannot balance our budget or clear our red ink on the backs of Social Security and Medicare. Lumping Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid together under the mantel of “entitlement reform” was a political strategy created by conservatives and fiscal hawks to paint a much scarier fiscal picture and build a sense of crisis that ignores the unique strengths, challenges and solutions facing these very different programs.

In fact, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), if every so-called “entitlement” in the federal budget were repealed outright — eliminating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other critical programs — but nothing were done to slow the growth in health care costs overall, we would still find ourselves spending almost 70 percent of the nation’s wealth on health care by 2082. It is clear America does not face an entitlement crisis; it faces a health care financing problem.