President Obama has not exactly been a profile in courage with respect to entitlement reform. If he has any plans or any will to do anything about it, he has yet to show them. But that doesn't stop him from criticizing people who try to cut other parts of the budget:
And that’s why I think it’s going to be important for us to have a conversation after we get the short-term budget done about how do we really tackle the problem in a comprehensive way. And that means not just going after Head Start or Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- that’s not where the money is.
Even if CPB (which really doesn't need public money at all) and Head Start (a completely ineffective program) aren't where the money is, Obama completely avoided all of the areas "where the money is" when he presented his ten-year budget this year, so who is he to criticize?
Some of his defenders may point to Obamacare, which cuts Medicare funding, as an example of his taking leadership on this issue, but that's very misleading. Much of the savings from Medicare was obviously imaginary and meant only to pad the bottom line for the Obamacare bill. As for the rest of the savings, they're used to pay for the bill's new entitlement programs, so they do nothing to shore up Medicare.
So Obama can criticize small budget cuts all he likes, but they are far more serious than anything he's proposed.
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