According to a copy of the plan, obtained by POLITICO, the group would impose a two-step legislative process that would make $500 billion worth of cuts immediately followed by a second bill to create a “fast-track process” that would propose a comprehensive bill aimed at dramatically restructuring tax and spending programs. The plan calls for changes to Social Security to move on a separate track, and establishes an elaborate procedure for considering the measures on the floor.
I really salute this group for working so hard to find a solution.
With all due respect Father Harmon, either you didn’t read the full article or somehow failed to note that it does little other than kick the can further down the road. “The group punts many of the specifics to other committees, which would be asked to find savings in discretionary and mandatory spending.”
We have been asking these same committees, these same Senators (and Representatives) year after year, to recommend savings and year after year instead of savings and efficiencies we have had ever increasing budgets, ineffciencies, and deficits. There is nothing mandatory in the wording that I have read, just more wringing of hands and please, please get along.
So, let’s please get along with real reform, real budget and deficit reductions, and a little fiscal (and monetary) sanity. Including a balanced budget amendment in some form and a look at the insanity of the FedRes policies After that, let’s tackle term limits in the Congress.
And, for bona fides, not now but once upon a time was a practicing economist who apparently remembers more from ECON 101/102 than most in the current administration and FedRes.
Sounds like just more smoke and mirrors to me.
I’m a bit concerned by the mechanics, but I’m with Kendall, it tracks closely enough to Bowles-Simpson that it may be our best shot.
While I don’t like it I will admit that it stands better chances of passage. But it’s a two step process, the politiciams will never get to step two.
All that’s happening at this point is that the political parties are passing a hand grenade back and forth. The only question is in whose hands it will be when the timer winds down and it blows up.
The real question is whether it is our economy that blows up after somebody somewhere either quits buying our bonds, or, the world decides that the Fed buying our debt is a shell game and the
John m: One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
We the people keep electing these career politicians, who are patently incapable of actually controlling their spending. Time to elect someone who is NOT a politician (perhaps Herman Cain)? Anyone who thinks our current elected congress and Senate politicians are going to do something different is exhibiting the symptoms of insanity….
This gang of six plan will cut the DEFICIT by as much as 3.7 Trillion over the next 10 years? That is $370 Billion per year? Our deficit is projected to be $1.7 Trillion this year alone, and if you look at the Obama optimistic numbers, that means this plan will increase the national debt by something over a Trillion dollars a year. Let me say that again, increase our national debt by a TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! WTF? (and no, that is not ‘win the future’) Who in their right minds thinks that nearly doubling our already outrageous national debt in the next 10 years is a ‘good plan’?
Excuse me, but we need to vote all these idiots out of office and replace them with people that have actually worked for a living….
As 8 points out: A “spending cut” is Washington speak for; “a reduction in the rate of spending increase”. And no Congress of President, at the end of the 10 year period, when actual cuts came due, ever had the courage to actually make the cuts. It will never happen.
Umm… how can you call a plan a “tax cut” that raises revenue e.g. taxes, by $1 trillion?
While I admire their desire to put a comprehensive deal on the table, they don’t seem to face that fact that we didn’t “tax-cut” our way into a $1.7 trillion debt, we spent it, and it was all money spent in the last 2 1/2 years when Obama and a Democratic practical super-majority in congress spent money like sailors on shoreleave.
If you want a simple solution that’s a compromise, what’s so crazy about just rolling back spending to 2008? It’s still too much of a deficit, but $400 billion is a lot more palatable than $1.7 trillion. So that nobody gets to be the “bogeyman” just make the law set up so that the rollbacks come from the places that got the increase then.
That would instantly reduce the deficit by 2/3’s in one year, and then some sort of future deficit hawk legislation or amendment could be implemented.
Agreed, billqs, but way too simple for our insane government. Even better would be to jump back to the size of government Bill Clinton had when the budget actually had a surplus, although we would have to make allowances for the level of military spending that was not present then. Our current government is spending TWICE what Bill Clinton did… So, do you feel we are getting twice the benefits we got under Bill?
Our national political will has a severe case of ADHD. Immediate gratification is the name of the game for both sides. The right is as much akin to the Children of the 60s as the left, but can’t see it.
We can neither slash and cut our way out of this mess; neither can we continue to hand out free money. As weak and sloppy as the Gang of Six’s proposal is, they stand out like heroic statemen compared to the others which only call for the one or the other.
I can live with compromise.
The problem is that in many states, including mine, serving in Congress has become a lifetime proposition. Unless they die in office, or try to move to the next rung, there’s no chance in getting a change. And the Democrat Party closely controls who are the selected heirs to the office in case there is a vacancy or death. Generally they have a succession plan going where it is understood that a certain politician in the House will step into the Senate seat in the event of a death of an incumbent, and be replaced by a handpicked person for the vacant Congress seat. Especially if you do this these things between elections, when the Party can handpick the interim successor who will then be the incumbent in the next special general election, you never really have to have an open election.
Maybe in a two-party state it is different, but our state has been controlled by the Democrats since the early Fifties. Our Senior Senator has been in office since the early Sixties, our “Junior” Senator was appointed to his office by the Democrat governor in 1990, and then ran in an unopposed special election.
I suggest rolling per capita spending back to where it was in 1999 + the rate of inflation, and roll taxes back to where they were in 1999 + the rate of inflation.
Mitchell #14: Yes, I agree. The Clinton+Gingerich years are the one time in the last fifty years or so when we had a surplus. Since then we have cut taxes and increased spending.
The one big problem is medical costs (Medicare/Medicaid + prescription drug coverage + veteran’s benefits) whose price increases at much higher than the rate of inflation. I recommend Republicans try to work with ObamaCare to improve it; rather than reflexively trying to kill it.
Listening to NPR this morning, a major gimmick in this latest proposal is that they are going to redefine inflation, on the theory that price increases of an item really aren’t price increases, because you can shift to a cheaper product. In other words, if the price of hamburger goes up, you won’t pay a higher price for hamburger but will begin to eat dog food. So as inflation goes up they will understate it to reflect this supposed change in preferences.
The reason to intentionally understate inflation so they don’t have to raise social security payments, etc. Of course, even with them cooking the books on measuring inflation, they will only save $300 billion over 10 years, which seems like a drop in the bucket given the massive trillions of spending they are doing now.