'Do or die' deficit reduction
The congressional “super committee” charged with finding —before Nov. 23! — at least $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade certainly has its hands full.
The 12-member panel, made up of six Democrats and six Republicans, has started meeting and gathering information, but let’s face it, information isn’t the problem. What we need is action, and getting to action when you have an evenly divided committee of D’s and R’s may be a huge task.
That’s why Congress wrote into the law a provision that if the committee doesn’t do anything, there will be $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts. That means something will happen, but it would certainly send a better message to the country and the world if Congress can work on a targeted solution instead of counting on across-the-board cuts.
Most of the early talk so far has revolved around whether or not tax increases are going to be written into the proposal. Certainly, you can make a good case for tax increases being part of any serious long-term solution, but that does not mean the will power exists now to get them through Congress.
Possibly more viable would be closing some specific tax loopholes or doing minor tax reform that would escape being called an increase. But what’s needed now — in the TWO months before that November deadline hits — is ANY progress.
Remember, $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade is a trivial amount compared to the large amount of deficit reduction we need over time.
Accordingly, the committee needs to focus on bipartisan agreement on low-hanging fruit that can get swift support. If they can’t do that with the first trillion, we’ll not be able to do it with the tens of trillions in deficit reduction we really need to achieve over the next decade.
That failure would do a lot of harm to our economy because it would show that our government is not able to make real change. In effect, Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt, which hinged on an assessment that Washington can’t face the music, would be confirmed.
That being the case, we have to conclude that any approach would be acceptable for accomplishing the first $1.2 trillion in reductions. The question, of course, is whether or not those 12 members of Congress — and in particular the Democrats who prefer tax increases — are going to be able to sell themselves on the notion that action is essential.
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If you have ideas you think will work to bring the federal budget back to reality, Sen. Max Baucus wants to hear from you. The senator, who is one of the Democrats appointed to the super committee, is asking for feedback from Montanans who think they have practical solutions to reduce the deficit.
You can submit ideas on the senator’s website at http://baucus.senate.gov/?p=deficit_committee or by writing to him at: Office of Senator Max Baucus, Attn: Ideas for Cutting the Deficit, 511 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510.