“Taxes are off the table,” Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said in an interview. “We have to do more cuts. There’s no way we can financially sustain where we are as a country.”

To make a significant dent in federal spending, “you’ve got to reform entitlements,” Burr said.

Entitlement Changes

Regardless of whether entitlement changes are paired with revenue, they’re hard to design. Policy makers aren’t sure which changes would most effectively slow growth in health-care costs.

Because of the desire to protect current retirees, significant changes don’t generate much savings in the 10-year congressional budget scoring time frame. They are also easy to turn into political weapons, as Republicans did with the Medicare cuts that helped finance Obama’s 2010 health-care law.

Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, said he still sees room for an agreement that would address entitlement programs and revamp the tax code.

“The mark of leadership over the next four years is whether the president provides cover for the Democrats to reform entitlements and do the things that need to be done,” he told reporters yesterday.

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