Most plans to put the federal budget on a more sustainable path make a crucial assumption: That today’s younger workers will pay more of their own retirement costs than previous generations have.

By setting aside more money for retirement, the thinking goes, these younger workers can enable the federal government to reduce the high projected growth of Social Security and Medicare. They should theoretically be able to do this because they have more time to save large amounts of money and to let those savings compound.

As The Concord Coalition has often noted, however, Washington already favors older generations in many ways. And younger Americans face a number of financial hurdles and future challenges that must be kept in mind.

Many of them have been hit hard by the last recession, struggling with a poor job market and – thanks to skyrocketing tuition costs -- large amounts of student debt. With companies cutting back on retirement and health care programs, many younger people who have jobs  do not receive the compensation or employee benefits that their parents did.

The large and growing federal debt, meanwhile, means that younger Americans can expect higher taxes and less assistance from the federal government...

In his State of the Union Address President Obama declared: “Our government shouldn’t make promises we cannot keep, but we must keep the promises we’ve already made.”

It was good applause line, but it glossed over a key point: The promises we’ve already made are the ones we cannot keep.

It is widely accepted that current fiscal policy is unsustainable. By definition, that means something has to change. Yet, if we decide that all promises must be kept, we can’t change anything without “breaking a promise.”

The dilemma for policymakers in Washington is that for years they have made unfunded promises and there is no politically convenient way to reverse this.

The first thing to do is just face up to it.

That’s why a bipartisan group of former members of Congress included this warning among their findings from their Strengthening of America forum series last fall: “We cannot put our debt on a sustainable path without reductions in the projected cost of entitlement programs, cuts in discretionary spending and higher revenues.”

Strictly speaking, any of those things could be characterized as breaking a promise.

It could be argued, for example, that...

The long-standing impasse on tax policy has basically boiled down to this: Democrats want more revenue, raised entirely from households with incomes over $250,000. Republicans don’t want any new revenue, and especially not from higher tax rates on the rich. It seems like an irreconcilable difference.

But if you get beyond the predicable partisan rhetoric there is room for optimism that a deal can be reached.

Republicans have begun to shed their single-minded devotion to anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist’s “no new taxes pledge”. Notable examples are Senators Bob Corker (R-TN), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) along with Representative Peter King (R-NY).

Many Republicans aren’t so enamored with Grover’s “no new taxes” pledge these days, because they don’t agree with the “no new revenue” interpretation. These Republicans recognize the economic difference between raising revenue by raising marginal tax rates, and raising revenue by broadening the tax base and reducing “tax expenditures”– the subsidies in the tax code. The former increases the size and influence of government; the latter reduces it.

For any Republican who feels the same way that Corker, Chambliss, Graham and King do, the common ground they share with the Obama administration on tax policy and...

Signals from the first post-election budget meeting between the President and congressional leaders, which took place at the White House on Friday, were very good.

Congressional leaders of both parties appeared together after the meeting. There were no lines in the sand, no threats, and no impugning each other’s motives.

Beyond the low bar of politeness, President Obama and his guests appeared to be focused on the right priority -- achieving a long-term fiscal plan and not just a quick fix to the immediate pressure of the “fiscal cliff.”  

They spoke of a two-step process with a down payment on deficit reduction this year while putting together a framework for a long-term deal to be enacted next year along with a credible back-up mechanism -- more credible than a new cliff -- in case Congress fails to act. That basic approach has been recommended by many outside observers, including The Concord Coalition.  

Topping off the pre-Thanksgiving cheer was that a consensus seems to have been reached on the fundamental point that everything must be on the table, including revenues and entitlement spending.

We're still far from a long-term “grand bargain,” let alone a way around the fiscal cliff, but this is an essential starting point for fruitful negotiations.

Whether the...