Conrad Plan: $4T in Cuts

Politico reports:

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D) said Tuesday he will push for a 10-year plan cutting $4 trillion from future deficits—a political gamble that builds on last year’s debt commission report but worries fellow Democrats without more certainty first of Senate Republican support.

“I really want to get $4 trillion. I think it’s critical, ” Conrad said. “And I’m talking $4 trillion, 10 years and on the same basis as the fiscal commission.”

The North Dakota Democrat spoke after a full day in which he first caucused behind closed doors on the first floor of the Capitol with Democrats on his committee and then spoke to a weekly party luncheon. Conrad said he hoped to lay down a markup document as early as next week, but the timing could change given the fluid political situation—and continued disruptions in what’s proven a roller-coaster set of bipartisan talks.

Indeed, Conrad’s $4 trillion, 10-year goal is significantly more than what President Barack Obama committed to in a major speech on the debt issue April 13 and comes close to where House Republicans ended up in their own budget plan adopted days later.

To be sure, these number comparisons tell only part of the story in any budget. And Conrad is proposing a very different route than that taken by the House GOP: he would do more to protect the existing Medicare program, for example, and relies on close to $1 trillion in new revenues generated by proposed tax reforms.

Nonetheless, Democrats are skittish that the chairman is moving too fast to the middle when he can’t guarantee he can bring Senate Republicans with him.

The big roadblock may be procedural as much as political. A budget resolution is only a blueprint, and if Conrad’s plan assumes higher revenues, he can’t specify that the money will come from reforms — such as doing away with costly deductions or tax preferences—and not rate increases.