Deficit commission hits a snag, which isn’t a surprise

Today was to be the day.

But not surprisingly, coming up with a solution to the nation’s deficit problem is taking a little longer than planned.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, chairmen of President Barack Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission, announced Tuesday afternoon that the full commission won’t vote on a recommendation today. Now they’re shooting for Friday.

It really isn’t surprising that the chairmen are having trouble getting the required 14 of 18 votes on a package that would go to the president and Congress.

No one is going to agree on all of the recommendations, many of which are not only politically sensitive, but call for the American people to make — dare we say it — sacrifices in the interest of staving off an eventual financial disaster.

Just by meeting and putting thoughts to paper the commission is ahead of Congress — which last year couldn’t even agree to take the first step toward fiscal responsibility, which would have been passing the Conrad-Gregg Amendment, which would have made a fiscal oversight commission a creation of Congress.

The nation already knows a good deal about the kinds of recommendations the Bowles-Simpson commission has been discussing.

They will include Social Security, by way of a gradual increase in retirement age, indexing increases to a lower inflation rate and some sort of means testing.

And there will be tax reform, that will include simplified tax brackets, fewer deductions and increased gasoline taxes.

Under Medicare and Medicaid, co-pays would increase and more recipients would be channeled into managed care programs.

And there would be spending cuts, not only in discretionary spending, which would include such things as NASA, Corps of Engineers water projects, national museums and parks, the State Department and various education programs, but also cuts in the Department of Defense.

Starting point

All of this provides a good starting point for Congress to begin seriously debating what has to be done as the nation surpasses a national debt of $13 trillion and heads toward that moment when the debt exceeds the nation’s GDP. That’s a crossing point that dates to an extraordinary time: the end of World War II. The first generation after the war worked hard at reducing the debt. Since 1980, we seem to be working hard to increase it.

But the commission has to provide more than talking points. Congress must change its profligate ways. If there is one policy that is worse than tax and spend, it is borrow and spend.

Neither political party’s hands are clean when it comes to driving up budget deficits and the national debt. They’re both going to have to work at solving the problem, and to do that they’re going to have to stop pretending that there will be no pain involved.