Final reports from government commissions are not generally known to be stirring or often acted upon. Most of the time, that's OK. Commissions are usually government's way of pretending to address a problem without really doing so.
Last week, though, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform -- the Deficit Commission -- released a document that I would strongly suggest everybody read. Tasked eight months ago by President Obama to come up with recommendations for reducing the deficit, the bi-partisan Deficit Commission actually did something noteworthy for a government exercise: They told the truth.
While any set of recommendations that aims to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years is worth a close look, I believe that the must-read portion of the report is the brutally honest assessment of just how serious our Federal spending problem is.
In less than two pages, the Deficit Commission paints the picture that every American and especially every Member of Congress needs to "get," beginning with the simple statement: "Our nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path."
Here are a few facts the Commission lays out in its report:
Right now, the federal debt is 62% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- twice what it was in 2001.
Even worse, on our current path, the federal debt will be 90% of GDP by 2020, and 185% of GDP by 2035. That's right. Unless we change what we are doing, the public debt will be almost twice the size of the entire American economy.
How about this fact: By 2025 -- only 15 years from now -- federal revenues will only be sufficient to pay the interest on the debt and Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Nothing else. No military, no domestic spending, no nothing except interest and entitlements without borrowing or printing more money.
As I travel the country, it is obvious that Americans realize government spends too much. On that point no one disagrees. But what this Presidential Commission has done is put an official stamp on a stark reality: A nation whose debt equals or surpasses its entire economy simply cannot survive. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said, our debt may be the most serious threat to national security we face.
Right now, more than half our public debt is owned by foreign creditors, the largest, of course, being China. If the debatable "threats" in Iraq and Afghanistan merit going to war, what does having countries like China own half our debt merit?
The Deficit Commission, and many of the rest of us, speak of the imperative for "across the board" spending reduction. Absolutely, anytime we can make government spend less in everything it does, that is a good thing. However, as anyone who has ever managed a government can attest, simply directing government agencies to spend less in a given year is a temporary solution at best.
It is simply human and institutional nature that those agencies will reduce spending by deferring outlays, not hiring new folks, and doing the least painful things they can find. Any bureaucracy can find a percentage point here and a percentage point there to reduce -- without really changing what it does.
Those kinds of restraint are better than nothing, certainly, but they are not the long-term answer. Truly cutting government spending for the next generation and beyond requires much more than number games or deferrals. It requires fundamentally reducing what government does.
Yes, we can direct the federal Department of Education to spend only $60 billion instead of $70 billion and save some money, or... we can do what we really need to do, which is recognize that education has not been well-served by federal meddling, and get rid of the entire department and its entire $70+ billion annual price tag.
We can give HUD a little less money with which to distort the real estate and mortgage markets, or we can acknowledge that the government really has no place in the housing business and take that entire agency' and its $40 billion budget off the books forever.
The list goes on, but the point is simple: While the Deficit Commission's report may be the boldest such document we have seen from official Washington in a long time, it isn't bold enough. Eliminating waste, requiring government to do more with less, freezing salaries, etc., while laudable, won't do it. Plain and simple, we need to cut what government does, not just what it spends trying to do it.
The commissions report wasn't bold enough in the fact that it didn't ask those who received the lions share of the past 10 years to help get our fiscal house in order. The top 2%. The middle class is already being decimated by losses in jobs, 401k's, pensions(if they still have them) home values etc... Now this so called deficit commission calls for further encumbering the middle class with paying down the deficit while giving further tax breaks to the wealthy. TAX CUTS DO NOT CREATE JOBS!!!
The way to reduce the deficit is to create jobs, while it may sound like your being fiscally responsible to cut govt programs, those programs employee a lot of people, that would be counter-productive to helping the economy.
How about ending the 2 wars we are in first, then we can discuss fiscal responsibility.
Tax cuts as an incentive or with strings attached may help, but just tax cuts alone for big business do nothing.
He got our America-eating military cancer going and it's hollowing us out from the inside.
Of course you would suggest eliminating the Dept. of Education.
Now that people have been reduced to scrambling for the next house payment and food on the table let us by all means take away education so the average person cannot have the tools to see what is wrong and try to change it.
I am disgusted. Not surprised but nevertheless, disgusted.
(a) the Dept of Education educates (it does not)
(b) an absence of the Dept of Education means an absence of education (an inane assumption)
It might be useful for you to reserve your disgust for actual atrocities, rather than bogeymen
Getting rid of it along with the periodic push for vouchers are part of weakening our educational system even further along with NCLB and now race to the top. I realize these are from the federal level, but a properly run Dept. of Education with good ideas can aid in assuring a good education in all parts of the country.
Typical Republican, in other words...
Until at least a PRETENSE of leveling the playing field is made - until those who have STAGGERINGLY profited from looting the wealth of the USA are required to pay into the kitty commensurate with what they have taken out - there will be NO progress for the USA - and I, for one couldn't care less if we descend into deficit hell - it can't be much worse than where we are now...
Guess what - Greece has been right where it is for thousands of years - the'y'll be there for thousands more. They will make adjustments and carry on - without turning EVERYTHING over to THEIR uber-wealthy, like WE are determined to do...
That is so absurd, it's idiotic. Right, let's spend less for hospitals, immunizations, food inspections, new drug treatments, building inspectors, food inspectors, fire protection - the list gets pretty long. . . .
Apparently you have no idea how government works, or what "facts" are.
Projected federal reveunues for 2015 are just that - projections, they aren't "facts." And seeing how Republicans have been claiming that Soc. Security is about to die for decades now (while borrowing from it every chance they get) I wouldn't put much stock in their projections.
The bumperstick mentality of the Republican party is why we are where we are today.
Without federal departments or at least minimum guidelines we would have a mishmash of laws much like our corporate tax rates and insurance minimums. If the state upriver of you decides that arsenic is not that bad, what will stop them from allowing more of it in the river?
The problem with Libertarians is that in wanting more freedom, they will actually concede more to the truly rich and powerful. Do you really think any corporations has your interests in mind, or your freedoms?
As far as the 2nd paragraph goes, that would be a legitimate case for the federal government to get involved.
Hmmm, now let us look at the cost of discretionary spending: 782 billion on defense and 437 on everything else.
So are you going to suggest we slice the military budget in half? Saves us $391 billion a year.
Let the tax cuts expire (oh I know, you poor widdle multimillionaires! Having to pay any taxes whatsoever, does this mean not getting an extra yacht this year? If we want shared sacrifice, only fair everyone pay what we paid in 2001. Maybe we can get the economy back the way it was then too.) That drops the deficit by another $400 billion.
The deficit would be $379 billion. Instead of slicing and dicing during the middle of a recession people from having jobs-let us raise the corporate tax rate again. To where they spend all of that 1.7 trillion they are sitting on, on their employees. Who run out and spend the money thereby increasing the collection rate at all levels.
Why is it so easy to harm the poor and middle class but we give the wealthy and corporate world a complete pass?