Last week's proposal on debt reduction from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, chairmen of the President's commission on reducing the national debt, has been met with a huge amount of criticism. In all actuality, it's an excellent plan in need of a just few obvious changes. The fact of the matter is this: As the economy slowly heals from the Great Recession, we need to return to the days of 1999 and 2000, when the federal budget was balanced and in surplus.
Unfortunately, the record, back-breaking annual deficits of the Bush administration have added such mountainous piles to the overall national debt that it will take 15 to 20 years to bring our annual budgets into balance, but only if the government makes the hard choices necessary to do so.
Yes, that includes raising the retirement age. Yes, that includes cuts in benefits to future recipients of Social Security. Yes, that includes raising taxes. Yes, that includes reductions in defense spending.
The hard choices include all of those things and many different, smaller proposals to get our fiscal house in order. Unfortunately, there is too much in the proposal that make it D.O.A. by both Democratic and Republican members of the commission, not to mention both houses of congress. If you think the incoming Republican House majority will be serious about deficit spending, you need only look back to the previous decade when, under a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, the budget surpluses of the Clinton administration immediately gave way to record deficits. The Republican Party is not, and never has been, the party of fiscal responsibility. The Democrats won't be much better, as they have already balked at the proposed cuts to many beloved programs.
The new British government, a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, last month took a hard line against their deficits. Massive cuts and tax increases were implemented in an effort to regain solid fiscal footing, damn the political consequences.
To my fellow Americans on both the left and right, I ask you this: If not this plan, or something similar, then how would you propose, realistically, we get our fiscal house in order?
