Conrad to Dems: Back Debt Panel Plan
The Hill reports:
The Senate Democrats’ leading budget hawk will try to hammer home the message this week that his colleagues must get serious about slashing the nation's rising debt.
As the caucus gathers for their annual retreat in Charlottesville beginning Tuesday, Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, is determined to use the huddle to try to convince them to back a cost-cutting plan close to that of President Obama’s debt commission, which many in the party think was extreme and unwarranted.
Conrad went so far Tuesday as to suggest that efforts like the House Republicans’ proposed $32 billion cut, which Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected as “draconian,” is really small grapes.
Conrad has said cuts this year like the ones proposed by the GOP could hurt the economy, but at the same time would do little to reduce a deficit projected to be $1.5 trillion this year.
The senator has decided against running for reelection because he's so worried about America's fiscal condition that he says campaigning for votes would be a distraction from the serious task of fiscally rescuing the nation.
“What matters to me is an overall plan that over ten years that gets to the level of deficit reduction in the commission plan,” he told reporters. “All the rest of this is to me, it just doesn’t go to the heart of the problem.”
Conrad’s presentation follows a Monday night meeting in Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) office, where Conrad and a core group of senators who served on the commission met to discuss how to turn its recommendations into legislative language.
The proposals from Obama’s debt commission were controversial, and the group failed to win the supermajority of commission members necessary to guarantee an up-or-down congressional vote on their chairmen’s plan.
That plan recommended spending caps, entitlement reforms and the elimination of tax breaks cherished by home owners and businesses. It came under criticism from both the right and the left.
Conrad, Durbin, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) met for two hours Monday night in an effort to put those recommendations into a bill.
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