Budget deficit commission must lead way to real progress

We can understand those who view with a jaundiced eye the recent convening of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. After all, tradition has it that whenever a complex, contentious, seemingly insurmountable and monstrous problem raises its ugly head, Washington throws a committee, a panel, a task force, a focus group or a blue-ribbon commission at it if only to give Americans the appearance that our leaders are actually toiling diligently to fix it.

More often than not, however, such panels become smokescreens that produce few if any lasting repairs.

Such must not be allowed to be the case with the bipartisan 14-member budget deficit commission, charged by President Obama to produce viable recommendations on slashing the federal government’s ballooning budget deficit. Specifically the commission has until Dec. 1 (conveniently one month after this year’s critical congressional elections) to craft ways to reduce the deficit to within 3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2015, thereby balancing the federal budget.

Historic deficit emerges

The need for action — however painful — to rein in the deficit became clearer on Wednesday when the Treasury Department reported that the federal deficit for April soared to $82.7 billion, the largest imbalance for that month in U.S. history. That was significantly higher than last year’s April deficit of $20 billion and above the $30 billion deficit that private-sector economists had expected.

Typically, the government runs surpluses in April, as millions of taxpayers file their income tax returns. But income tax payments plummeted this year, reflecting the impact of the recession, which has pushed millions of people out of work.

Under Obama’s budget, this year’s deficit is projected to reach $1.5 trillion, or 10.3 percent of the GDP, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It’s expected to decrease slightly to $1.3 trillion next year, or 8.9 percent of the GDP, and to 4 percent of the GDP by 2014. Without intervention, the CBO predicts it will resume rising again after that.

Clearly, the commission’s work will be challenging. Though everyone agrees that the deficit must be reduced, any meaningful options of spending cuts or tax increases or any combination of those options will not come without substantial pain for many Americans and substantial discord among commission members. Because the scope of the deficit illness is so draconian, so, too, must be the scope of its remedies.

No viable option should be kept off the table. Among those expected to be considered are dramatic tax increases particularly for the rich, value-added or national sales taxes and massive cuts in spending, including such popular entitlement programs as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

No political-game playing

Throughout its deliberations this summer and fall, however, the commission must devote itself to steering clear of one potentially crippling roadblock to success: politics as usual. The critical need to restore fiscal integrity to our nation must transcend the game-playing, name calling and filibustering that have stalled or bulldozed action on a host of important national issues in the halls of Congress for the better part of President Obama’s 16-month administration.

As Obama himself told commission members at their first meeting, “This is going to require people of both parties to come together and take a hard look at the growing gap between what the government spends and what the government raises in revenue. And it will require that we put politics aside, that we think more about the next generation than the next election.”

The commission would be wise to heed the president’s advice toward success in drawing a detailed blueprint for restoration of fiscal solvency in the United States.