Avlon: Don't Let Politics Derail Deficit Panel
John Avlon writes in The Daily Beast:
The president's deficit-reduction commission is scheduled to vote tomorrow on what might be the best shot our country has at a bipartisan plan to get the national debt under control. Establishment Washington is sniffing that the proposals are DOA while ambitious draft plans have come under attack from the right and—especially—the left.
"We've got Holocaust deniers, climate-change deniers, and now we've got fiscal-crisis deniers," Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, told me. "They don't believe that we have to deal with our deficits and our debt."
After an election year animated by Tea Party protesters angry over the generational theft of the deficit and the debt, DC politicians would rather demagogue the debt for campaign gains—or embrace denial encouraged by special interests—than actually deal with it. Even by Washington standards, this is cynical.
But the commission co-chairmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles are not giving up without a fight. They are considering a range of policy packages that can reach the 14 out of 18 commission-member threshold needed to move the proposal to Congress for consideration. Sources familiar with the commission's thinking suggest that one option could include delaying the vote for another week as they try to gain support for a more modest or incremental set of proposals. This is not an area where we can afford to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If these two old Washington hands play their cards right, it will present an early challenge for President Obama’s post-midterm election recommitment to bipartisan leadership and the Republicans’ promises to rein in the deficit and the debt. If they fail, no one will be happier than our Chinese government creditors.
The GOP's early actions fueled the Beltway cynicism toward this commission. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for a bipartisan deficit-reduction panel in at least six floor speeches—but when the measure finally came up for a vote early this year, seven GOP Senate cosponsors of the bill voted against it. No, we're not living in a Profiles in Courage-style era.
Consequently, President Obama convened the commission led by former Clinton Chief of Staff Bowles and the respected former Republican Senator Simpson. Congressional leaders of both parties hand-picked its members, including deficit hawk Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and former OMB Director Alice Rivlin, who also co-chaired the competing Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force.
Days after the midterm election, Bowles and Simpson released a draft set of proposals designed to start a public debate about the unsustainable nature of our deficits and debt. They set off a firestorm. Few people were expecting the breadth and depth of their plan—a sweeping reformation of taxes, spending and entitlements that would reduce the deficit by some $4 trillion over the next decade while achieving a balance between taxes and spending at 21 percent of GDP.
The Dean of Reasonableness, David Gergen, was quick to call the proposals "an act of political courage," warning that "for those who reject them out of hand, it's an act of political irresponsibility and indeed cowardice."
As if on cue, Nancy Pelosi released a statement affirming the importance of doing "what is right for our children and grandchildren's economic security as well as for our nation's fiscal security"—and then did precisely the opposite, calling the proposals "simply unacceptable."
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