Deficit-cutting plan fails to advance to Capitol

Andrew Taylor, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's deficit commission failed Friday to forge consensus on what to do about an increasingly urgent debt problem, but the breakdown of its vote lays out the road map for how Congress might address it next year.

The 11-7 vote in favor of the panel co-chairmen's recommendations for a painful mix of spending cuts and tax increases foretells a bitterly partisan and possibly unproductive debate in the House. If there's a deal to be had, it will likely be reached in the Senate. Fourteen votes were needed to officially send the plan to Congress now for quick action on it.

About $4 trillion would be slashed from the budget over the coming decade — three-fourths of it through spending cuts and the other fourth from higher taxes. Deficits over the period are estimated in the $10 trillion range and are expected to require the federal government to borrow up to 33 cents of every dollar it spends.

Five of six senators on the panel — two Democratic allies of Obama and three conservative Republicans — voted for the plan's wrenching measures, including raising the Social Security retirement age, cutting future benefit increases and rolling back popular tax breaks like the mortgage interest deduction.

But only one of the half dozen House members on the commission endorsed the proposal — Democrat John Spratt Jr. of South Carolina. And he doesn't have to face voters in his district again; they decided last month to retire him from Congress.

No other House members were willing to swing behind the painstakingly assembled proposal by Democrat Erskine Bowles, a White House chief of staff in Bill Clinton's presidency, and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming. Republicans Reps. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Dave Camp of Michigan and Jeb Hensarling of Texas recoiled from tax increases and said it didn't do enough to rein in skyrocketing health care costs. Not one of them even attended the panel's final meeting.

House Democrats Xavier Becerra of California and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, meanwhile, pressed for bigger tax increases and less dramatic cuts to spending.

"The Bowles-Simpson plan further erodes the middle class and threatens low-income Americans," said Schakowsky.

The ink wasn't even dry on an earlier version of the proposal before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called it "simply unacceptable," a move that Republicans said undercut the panel's work.

The plan would nearly freeze the Pentagon's budget and cut spending outright by most domestic agencies. It would nearly double the federal tax on gasoline with a 15 cents-per-gallon increase. Income tax rates would fall, but only by eliminating or scaling back dozens of popular tax breaks, including the child tax credit, mortgage interest deduction and deduction claimed by employers who provide health insurance.

That recipe of shared political pain is the type of sacrifice that budget hawks say is needed in any bipartisan deficit-cutting effort.

"People have to be willing to embrace plans which actually lend themselves to compromise ... the kinds of plans that everybody's uncomfortable with but are the only things that get support," said Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates fiscal responsibility.

"That's where the Senate is. That's not where the House is," MacGuineas added. "I think that shows that the Senate is going to be the real place of leadership on this."

President Obama reacted cautiously. He praised the commission for its work and promised to closely study its proposals, but didn't endorse any of them.

"The undeniable fact is that no one party can successfully tackle this challenge alone," Obama said. "We cannot afford to fall back on old ideologies, and we will all have to budge on long-held positions."

Commission members who voted for the plan said they did just that. Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin's vote was especially surprising. Durbin, of Illinois, resisted heavy pressure from Democratic constituencies like labor unions and trial lawyers in backing the plan.

"I was telling my base they had to stick with me because I knew on the surface they didn't like this," Durbin said in an interview. "I honestly believe what I said. All of us need to be at the table when we face this challenge."

Meanwhile, GOP conservatives Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mike Crapo of Idaho defied anti-tax powerhouse Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax reform, whose opinions carry enormous weight among Republicans.

Part of the reason the Senate's likely to take the lead on any bipartisan plan stems from the chamber's rules, which require a bipartisan 60-vote threshold for any meaningful legislation. In the House, the majority party usually rules at will. Senators represent entire states, usually with diverse constituencies; House members often come from safely Democratic or Republican districts.

Despite their opposition to the final product, anti-tax House Republicans on the commission didn't paint themselves into any corners.

"If I believed that the increased revenue would be used for deficit reduction, I might reluctantly come to the table in a global agreement," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. "It just seems to me that somehow the spending restraint never quite materializes."

Commission members said that by winning over 11 of the 18 panelists, they had defied expectations. They said it showed that Washington is capable of having an "adult conversation" on a bipartisan basis about the painful choices required to avert a European-style debt crisis. Panel members said the commission's work had fundamentally changed the national debate on the deficit

"We have changed the issue from whether there should even be a fiscal plan for this country to 'what is the best fiscal plan for this country,'" said former Service Employees Union International president Andy Stern, who opposed the plan but praised its goals. "And that is an enormous tectonic paradigm shift," he added.

Still, it was easier for commission members to vote for the recommendations knowing it wasn't a binding vote on real legislation.

As Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, put it:

"You have to remember that no one's shooting with real bullets."

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2 conservatives, key liberal, back deficit plan

Andrew Taylor, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Some of the Senate's staunchest conservatives and one of its most powerful liberals on Thursday swung behind a controversial deficit-slashing proposal from the leaders of President Barack Obama's fiscal commission.

The plan would raise the Social Security retirement age and scale back popular tax deductions on health insurance and mortgage interest, among its many contentious provisions. It now has public commitments of support from a majority of the commission, but still will fall short of the votes needed to adopt the plan when the panel votes on Friday.

The plan gained the backing of two of the Senate's most conservative Republicans on Thursday and, in a major development, won approval from liberal Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who's a key ally of the president.

"Borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend for missiles or food stamps is unsustainable," Durbin wrote in an op-ed piece in Friday's Chicago Tribune. "When we engage in the critical decisions about our nation's future budgets, I want progressive voices at the table to argue that we must protect the most vulnerable in our society and demand fairness in budget cuts."

Durbin's announcement means that the plan by commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and former Wyoming GOP Sen. Alan Simpson will win support from a majority of the 18-member panel on Friday.

Announcements earlier Thursday by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, in favor of the politically explosive plan to cut the deficit by almost $4 trillion over the coming decade gave the measure momentum from key Senate conservatives.

But two House Republicans on the panel, which was created by Obama in the long-shot hope of coming up with a bipartisan plan to cut deficits expected to total almost $10 trillion over the same 10 years, announced they will oppose the plan, as expected. So did Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a panel member.

That means the plan would fall short of the 14 votes needed to send it to Congress for consideration. Nonetheless, even opponents such as future House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said it was a credible first step to build upon next year.

"It's the memo that controls the meeting," said panel member Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a supporter.

"The time for action is now," Coburn and Crapo said in a statement. "This plan will not just avert a disaster, but help drive the kind of economic recovery we need to create jobs and spur growth."

Durbin raised eyebrows Wednesday when he endorsed raising the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 69 over the coming 65 years, and he resisted heavy pressure from labor unions and others in backing the plan.

"This plan is not perfect, and it is certainly not the plan I would have written," Durbin wrote. "If we don't act now — if we pass this issue on to another Congress, another generation — the tough choices we face now only get tougher."

The plan also picked up support from the Senate's No. 3 Republican, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who said "I'm going to do my best to support recommendations like these."

Bowles and Simpson released the plan Wednesday. To control spending, it calls for politically difficult moves such as increasing the Social Security retirement age and reducing future increases to benefits. It would eliminate or scale back tax breaks — including the child tax credit, mortgage interest deduction and deduction claimed by employers who provide health insurance — in exchange for rate cuts on corporate and income taxes. It would raise the gas tax 15 cents a gallon to fund transportation programs.

The plan opened to catcalls from advocates on the left — over cuts to Social Security and other programs — and the right, who oppose its estimated $1 trillion or so in higher tax revenues over the coming decade.

Baucus opposed it Thursday, citing the impact the plan would have on his state, including a gas tax increase and cuts to Social Security and farm programs. He said the plan "would cut pensions for military members, lower Social Security payments, raise the retirement age and limit Medicare benefits."

The announcements by Durbin, Coburn and Crapo means 10 of the 18 commissioners have publicly endorsed the plan. House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., is leaning in favor. His yes vote would bring at least 11 of the 18 commission members behind the plan, awarding Simpson and Bowles a political victory unforeseen when Obama established the deficit panel earlier this year.

Ryan and another plan critic, top House Ways and Means Committee Republican Dave Camp of Michigan, say it wouldn't do enough to curb Medicare and Medicaid costs and would raise taxes too much. Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, are also against it.

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Not everyone agrees deficit is major problem

Zachary Roth, 11/18/10

If we can all agree on one thing, it's that the federal budget deficit is a big problem, right?

After all, that's the basic position of both parties, and when the chairs of President Obama's debt commission unveiled their draft proposal last week, it was the talk of Washington, with every pundit worth his salt offering praise or criticism (mostly criticism). The issue is, indeed, so pressing that the New York Times created its own interactive tool to let readers balance the budget themselves. There's even an imaginary presidential candidate, Hugh Jidette (get it?) to help draw attention to the deficit crisis. Of course, the ratio of tax increases to spending cuts that you favor will likely depend on your political views. But to judge from most of the coverage, that the $1.4 trillion debt is a problem that needs to be solved sooner rather than later isn't up for debate.

Except that it is. Ever since concerns over the deficit took center-stage in Washington earlier this year, several prominent economists -- all progressives --- have been pushing back, claiming not simply that proposed spending cuts are too deep, or that the rich should be asked to sacrifice more. Rather, they've challenged the entire premise of the debate: that a budget shortfall caused by over-spending and under-taxation stands to put an undue burden on future generations, and that cuts to government programs, including Social Security, can help fix the problem. That view, they say, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what's driving the deficit and how government spending works. In fact, they argue, as one recently put it, that "the current deficit is a positive."

To be sure, as progressives, these thinkers -- call them the deficit contrarians -- already tend to take a skeptical view of efforts to cut government spending aimed at helping struggling Americans, as many deficit-cutting plans would likely do. But their credentials and prominence are such that their view deserves a much wider hearing than it's been getting -- especially given its enormous implications for the debate that's currently consuming Washington.

The starting point of the deficit contrarians' argument is that the deficit was caused not by over-spending and under-taxation, as the current debate would have it, but by the collapse in tax revenues that resulted from the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent economic slump.

In prepared testimony before the presidential debt commission this summer, James Galbraith, a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, argued that this means the only way to reduce the deficit is to reduce unemployment, not to cut spending or raise taxes. Galbraith (pictured above) argued that the only way to reduce unemployment without adding to the deficit through more government spending is to get banks lending again, by fixing the root problems in the financial sector that caused the financial crisis in the first place.

Galbraith -- a former director of Congress's Joint Economic Committee, and the son of the renowned liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith -- went on to address the idea that cutting Social Security benefits can help close the deficit. That's been a mainstay of the debate, and it's a notion that the commission's co-chairs appear to subscribe to, judging from their recent proposal, which recommends significant cuts to the program. But Social Security, Galbraith noted, isn't  a spending program at all. It simply transfers wealth from today's taxpayers to low-income elderly people in the future. "One can favor or oppose [cutting benefits] on its own merits as social policy," Galbraith said. "But one cannot argue that it would save real resources that are otherwise being 'consumed' by the government sector."

Next, Galbraith took on the argument that deficits will produce higher long-term interest rates, making it prohibitively expensive for the government to borrow in the future. That's not true, he countered, because the government doesn't spend in the same way that private individuals or companies do. "So long as U.S. banks are required to accept U.S. government checks — which is to say so long as the Republic exists — then the government can and does spend without borrowing, if it chooses to do so," he declared.

All in all, Galbraith said, the current mania for deficit reduction is disastrously misplaced. "The right economic objectives are to meet real problems, not those conjured from thin air by economists," he concluded. "Bringing about a rapid end to unemployment, caring properly for an aging population, cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico, coping with our energy insecurity and with climate change are all far more important objectives than reducing a projection of future budget deficits."

Galbraith's testimony may have been the most detailed and extensive presentation of the deficit contrarians' position. But its basic thrust has received support from other prominent and respected figures. Paul Krugman of the New York Times, Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive economic think tank, and Robert Reich, who served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, all have contended, like Galbraith, that the deficit was caused by a loss of demand triggered by the bursting of the housing bubble.

Krugman and Baker also agree that concern over creating an interest burden for future generations is misplaced. Writing recently in the Boston Review, Baker noted that the Fed can simply buy the debt and hold it indefinitely, as it's now doing. "This means that the country really has no near-term or even mid-term deficit problem," he concluded. "The current deficit is a positive. In fact, if it were larger we would have more jobs and growth."

Krugman has used very similar language. "If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs," he wrote in February.

Reich hasn't gone quite that far, but he shares the view that the focus on the deficit as opposed to the economic slump is not only misplaced, it's counter-productive. "Our biggest problem isn't the size of pending federal budget deficits or debt but an anemic recovery that may drag on for years," Reich wrote recently. "And unless we're careful, budget-deficit mania may further slow economic growth -- thereby making future debts even less manageable."

As you can see from these examples, it's not as if these prominent economists -- and others who agree with them -- have been shy about expressing their view. And yet the mainstream debate in Washington offers surprisingly little evidence that their position even exists. That means the debate is skewed from the outset.

Of course, there's at least one other high-profile figure who has downplayed the importance of a balanced budget: That would be Dick Cheney, who's famously said to have declared, while arguing for a tax cut despite a looming shortfall, that "deficits don't matter." The former veep may now be surprised to see his position endorsed by a group of economists with very different priorities.

Late Update: Add Time's Joe Klein to the list of deficit contrarians.

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The Debt Commission Report

Erick Erickson, 11/11/10

As you wake up this morning, there is a lot of talk about the leaked report of the Debt Commission. Keep in mind that this is not the final report, but a draft passed out by the co-chairs.

What you need to know is pretty straight forward.

Yes, the plan ends the deficit. It does so with lots and lots of spending cuts across the board. There are actually some good suggestions in the plan, but there is one inescapable fact — the proposal has buried in it one trillion dollars in tax increases.

Some of what are defined as tax increases are, in fact, closing loopholes in the tax code that lobbyists have inserted on behalf of clients. But also included is getting rid of the home mortgage deduction. That would amount to a massive, massive tax increase on the middle class.

The reforms suggested for social security are out and out garbage. It is not means tested. It is not “lock boxed”. Payments are cut. The age of retirement is increased by several years.

This proposal is dead on arrival.

But there is another point that must be made — even were all the proposals, plans, and points adopted it would do no good. Why? Because until Washington admits that it has exceeded the powers given to it under the constitution the same problems will continue to occur over and over.

The Leviathan knows no bounds and, left to itself to check its own growth it will continue growing. Until we are willing to admit that Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives limited powers to Congress, we are wasting our time.

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/11/the-debt-commission-report/

The President's Debt Commission Proposal – Something to Offend Everyone: Doctors, Lawyers, Even Indian Chiefs

Jake Tapper, ABC News, November 10, 2010

On the same day the nation learned that the US started its new budget year with a the third highest monthly debt on record -- $140.4 billion – the co-chairs of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform issued a report detailing ways to reduce the national debt by $4 trillion over the next ten years with a program of $2 trillion in spending cuts, $1 trillion tax increases, means-testing Social Security, and increasing the retirement age to 69 by 2075.

The report has something in it to upset everyone: those opposed to tax increases, those opposed to Social Security cuts, health insurance companies, farmers, doctors, lawyers, and yes, even Indian chiefs.

“We must stabilize then reduce the national debt, or we could spend $1 trillion a year in interest alone by 2020,” says the Commission, co-chaired by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyoming. “A sensible, real plan requires shared sacrifice –and Washington should lead the way and tighten its belt.”

White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said that President Obama “will wait until the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work before commenting.” Burton said that the ideas in today’s report “are only a step in the process towards coming up with a set of recommendations and the President looks forward to reviewing their final product early next month.”

Liberals were not so reticent.

"This proposal is simply unacceptable," said outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "Any final proposal from the Commission should do what is right for our children and grandchildren’s economic security as well as for our nation’s fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare.  And it must strengthen America's middle class families--under siege for the last decade, and unable to withstand further encroachment on their economic security.”

AFL-CIO chairman Richard Trumka said that “the chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to ‘Drop Dead.’  Especially in these tough economic times, it is unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines for working people, Social Security and Medicare…This deficit talk reeks of rank hypocrisy:  The very people who want to slash Social Security and Medicare spent this week clamoring for more unpaid Bush tax cuts for millionaires.”

The report states that the US government needs to eliminate all “excess spending –defense spending, domestic discretionary spending, entitlement spending, & spending in the tax code.” Because of the “fragile” economic recovery, the commission recommends not commencing with any spending cuts until FY 2012.

The report looks at Social Security spending, saying that the government should make the “benefit formula” for Social Security more progressive – meaning benefits would target those who need them the most. Social Security would reduce payments to upper income recipients, and the retirement age would be increased based on the average American’s greater longevity, increasing the age to 68 by 2050 and 69 in 2075.

The commission proposes three options for reforming the tax code:

Three packages that do different things including increasing the gas tax, eliminating tax expenditures; and cutting tax credits for the oil and gas industries.

One, called the zero option, would:

Consolidate the tax code into three individual rates and one corporate rate;

Eliminate the AMT, Pease, and PEP;

Eliminate all $1.1 trillion of tax expenditures -- requiring income tax to be paid on the money you spend on health insurance coverage, charitable contributions, mortgage interest deductions and employer contributions to employee 401(k)/pension plans;

Dedicate a portion of savings to deficit reduction and apply the rest to reduce all marginal tax rates; and

Add back in any desired tax expenditures, and pay for them by increasing one or all of the rates from their zero-expenditure low.

A second, based on tax reform work by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Judd Gregg, R-NH, would:

Establish three tax rates for individuals –15%, 25% and 35%

Triple the standard deduction to $30,000 ($15,000 for individuals)

Repeal the AMT, PEP, and Pease;

Repeal state & local tax deductions and miscellaneous itemized deductions;

Limit mortgage deductions to exclude 2nd residences, home equity loans, and mortgages over $500,000;

Limit charitable deductions;

Reduce the corporate tax rate to 26%; and

Eliminate and modify several business tax expenditures, including domestic production deduction and energy tax preferences for the oil and gas industry.

A third option, called the tax reform trigger:

Calls on the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means Committees and the Treasury Department to develop and enact comprehensive tax reform by end of 2012;

Puts in place across-the-board “haircut” for itemized deductions, employer health exclusion, and general business credits that would automatically take effect in 2013 if reform is not yet enacted. The triggered haircut would increase over time until tax reform is enacted, limiting the proportion of deductions and exclusions individuals could take to around 85% in 2015 with corporations only able to take some proportion of their general business credits; and

Gradually increases the gas tax to fund transportation spending, increasing it by 15¢ per gallon beginning in 2013.

The conservative group Americans for Tax Reform issued a statement saying "this commission is merely an excuse to raise net taxes on the American people.  Support for the commission chair plan would be a violation of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge which over 235 Congressmen and 41 Senators have made to their constituents."

"The report deceptively calls their net tax hikes 'spending in the tax code,' ATR said in a statement. "There is no such thing, unless you assume the government has a right to all your money, and when they cut your taxes this is the same thing as 'spending money on you.'"

The co-chairs of the Commission offered an example of $200 billion in possible cuts including:

rolling back discretionary spending back to FY2010 levels for FY2012, requiring a 1% cut in discretionary budget authority every year from FY2013 though 2015

budgeting ahead of time for disaster funds;

limiting transportation spending;

freezing for three years all federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation, including freezing all noncombat military pay at 2011 levels;

reducing by one third all overseas bases;

reducing Congressional & White House budgets by 15%;

cutting the federal workforce by 10%;

slowing the growth of foreign aid; and

eliminating all earmarks.

Other cost savings would come from:

eliminating $3 billion in farm subsidies per year;

requiring federal workers to contribute ½ the cost  of their pensions instead of 1/14th;

reducing civilian & military early retirees’ cost of living adjustments; and

ending payments to states and Native American tribes for abandoned mines.

Health care costs would also be addressed.

The cost of the Medicare “Doc Fix” – which Congress passes periodically so as to avoid steep reductions in payments to doctors who accept Medicare – would be absorbed in other ways besides deficit spending, the commission recommends: “by asking doctors and other health providers, lawyers, and individuals to take responsibility for slowing health care cost growth.” This would be done by paying doctors and other health care providers less, among other tactics.

The Commission embraces tort reform - Enact specifically capping non-economic and punitive damages -- which it says would “reduce the cost of defensive medicine.”

As for other health care savings, the Commission co-chairs recommend strengthening the Independent Payment Advisory Board and eliminating the trigger that could kill IPAD in 2019. For government plans such as Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP, health care spending would be limited to growing at a rate of the Gross Domestic Product plus 1%. If that savings is not realized, premiums could be increased, or a “robust” public health care option could be created.

Those who have been long sounding the alarm about the national debt applauded the proposal today.

"It is truly a remarkable plan," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "This plan does it all - allows time for the economy to strengthen, brings down future deficits and debt, protects the most disadvantaged, makes government more effective and efficient, and promotes economic growth and competiveness."

David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States, called the proposal a “commendable, comprehensive, aggressive and good faith effort” that “puts ‘everything on the table.’”

--Jake Tapper

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/11/the-presidents-debt-commission-proposal-something-to-offend-everyone-doctors-lawyers-even-indian-chiefs.html