For those who are willing to set aside personal political agendas for the sake of argument, the draft recommendations by the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt-fighting panel are well worth consideration.
Former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, the Wyoming Republican, are to be commended for offering a wide slate of bold suggestions.
Yes, they will take political heat from both sides of the partisan divide, and even bolder suggestions actually are in order. But as Washington goes, these aren’t a bad start.
We hope the scope and sincerity of their suggestions won’t be cast aside.
Plenty of economists warn that the fiscal health of the United States government is seriously threatened by Washington’s runaway spending and the swollen federal debt.
Now approaching $14 trillion (or $44,130 per resident), the actual debt obligation of future payments to recipients of entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid is much, much higher — try nearly $62 trillion. Bowles and Simpson’s plan would take decades to actually balance the budget, but they say their fixes would shave nearly $4 trillion from deficit spending over the next decade.
The co-chairs seek to simplify the tax code by eliminating some tax breaks — like mortgage exemptions for homes priced $500,000 and higher — while raising some taxes such as the gasoline tax by 15 cents a gallon. The tax code also would become simpler across the board for low, middle and top earners, and the corporate tax rate would drop from its globally high 35 percent to 26 percent.
Yearly defense spending would be cut by $100 billion, and domestic discretionary spending by the same amount. The cuts would include a reduction of overseas bases, freezes on non-combat payroll, a reduction of 10 percent of the federal workforce, and eliminating earmarks.
Bowles and Simpson also would lower or cut tax exemptions for employer-provided health insurance coverage, slowly raise the retirement age for Social Security, increase the salary cap on Social Security to reap more in taxes from higher earners and lower cost-of-living increases. The co-chairs also would limit cost increases for Medicaid and Medicare.
Predictably, Democrats balked at suggested changes to entitlements, and Republicans criticized tax increases. But we would think both sides of the aisle should embrace the lost political art of compromise.
Americans forced to balance their own budgets know that it takes some sacrifice.
The question now is whether the Simpson-Bowles panel will approve a strong enough version of these goals and present that plan to the president on Dec. 1. We hope they do, and we hope Colorado’s elected leaders — especially Sen. Michael Bennet, who during the campaign pledged to forge compromises on delicate issues such as this — are prepared to push for tough changes.
