Social Security Versus Afganistan War

From Robert Naiman writing in the Huffington Post:

In an editorial today, the Washington Post takes President Obama to task for being concerned about the cost of the war in Afghanistan and the fact that it conflicts with domestic priorities. ...

[Quoting the Post] "Mr. Obama repeatedly cites the cost of the war and the need to shift resources to domestic priorities -- though spending on Afghanistan is well below 1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product." ...

Considering the Washington Post's view of proposals to reduce the projected long term deficit in the combined budget by cutting Social Security benefits by raising the normal retirement age to 70, it's seems apparent that the Washington Post's view is the latter: spend freely on the war, pinch pennies from America's working families.

I asked economist Dean Baker how much raising the normal retirement age would be likely to save. He said it would be about 0.7% of GDP. Thus, according to the across-the-board "less than 1% of GDP" standard, this would be too small to bother with.

But that is not the view of the Washington Post. In a front-page news analysis on September 24, the Washington Post took Congressional Republicans to task for not "offering solutions" to "tackling the ever-growing cost of entitlement programs" in their "Pledge to America."