Are Americans really so misinformed and naive that they think we can rein in federal debt without cuts to any major program, from defense and Homeland Security to Medicare to Social Security, as well as virtually everything in between?
In a USA Today/Gallup poll a few weeks ago, majorities opposed cutting government spending in every category listed except foreign aid — which, at less than 1 percent of the budget, would hardly get Uncle Sam out of his lounge chair much less on his way to the gym.
Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet isn’t buying this tale of rampant myopia. Americans tell pollsters they don’t want to cut programs they value, he told me last week, but that doesn’t mean they’d oppose a meaningful plan to trim the deficit — one that was bipartisan, comprehensive and balanced.
Based on his travels around the state, Bennet believes perhaps two-thirds of the public would buy into such a proposal, which is why he’s been working to get one on the table before it’s too late.
The short-term deadline is a matter of months — before election- year politics sours all hope of bipartisanship.
The long-term deadline, by contrast, is whatever morning we awake to discover that bond traders have begun to balk at financing the continued pileup of U.S. debt — at least at such low interest rates — plunging the global financial system into another round of turmoil and the U.S. economy into another recession, if we’re lucky.
Bennet thinks such a financial Armageddon is actually possible within a few years, given worst-case circumstances. Yet whatever the day and hour, sooner or later there must be a reckoning if Washington refuses to address the pace at which it is boldly racking up debt. As the Congressional Budget Office concluded this month in an analysis of the president’s spending plans, “Federal debt held by the public would double under the president’s budget, growing from $10.4 trillion (69 percent of GDP) at the end of 2011 to $20.8 trillion (87 percent of GDP) at the end of 2021.”
Fiscal conservatives may marvel at Bennet’s concern about red ink given his voting record during the biggest two-year spending splurge in history. Yet why scorn assistance from unexpected quarters? The road to Damascus is open to anyone with eyes to see that interest payments on the federal debt are expected to quadruple by 2021, from $207 billion to $844 billion.
Bennet has already helped to engineer a letter to Obama from 64 senators, half of them Republicans, urging him to “engage in a broader discussion about a comprehensive deficit reduction package” that includes “discretionary spending cuts, entitlement changes and tax reform.” And he’s a huge supporter of the Senate’s Gang of Six who have been struggling to craft legislation based upon recommendations from the president’s deficit reduction panel.
The Senate has to lead, Bennet believes, because it has the best shot at a bipartisan plan that cuts discretionary spending, slows the growth in entitlements and locates new revenue by broadening the tax base.
A recent vote-by-vote analysis in the National Journal concluded that the 2010 Congress was “the most polarized in the 30-year history” of the magazine’s ratings, so maybe a bipartisan deal in the Senate, let alone the House, is farfetched. But those inclined to throw up their hands and walk away might first recall the fear that gripped the nation when the markets cracked in 2008. As awful as that moment felt, the next time could be worse.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
