The Deficit Commission Is Born: Now What?
It's official: President Obama today created the bipartisan fiscal commission he proposed in his State of the Union message. Of course, the commission itself is just a step toward a plan – but what are our options for that plan?
The Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future report has lots of options, and there's additional commentary from the report's authors on what needs to be done at the Our Fiscal Future web site, including from Public Agenda president Ruth Wooden.
The leaders of the new deficit commission are: Democrat Erskine Bowles, a North Carolina banker and former White House chief of staff, and Republican Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming.
The panel, which is to deliver its recommendations by Dec. 1, will have less authority than would that in the recent Conrad-Gregg proposal that failed to win Congressional approval. Announcing the commission, the president emphasized that the accumulated weight of the deficit could hobble the economy and said "everything's on the table." At the same time, Obama pledged that in the short term, taking steps to encourage businesses to create jobs will continue to be top priority.
A sampling of react and related stories from around the web: thoughts from the economics blog Capital Gains and Games and The Wall Street Journal on the naming of the GOP members of the commission; Catherine Rampell of the New York Times, putting the panel in context, with a look at other entities bent on fiscal prudence; Time Magazine, on stimulus spending and deficit danger; and rumblings from Kathleen Sebelius that the Democrats will come together and post a single health care reform proposal by Monday, in advance of Obama's Feb. 25 bipartisan health care summit.
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In my honest opinion, until Washington D.C. rethinks America's outdated, cold war-mentality foreign policy, we will never be able to control the budget deficit. (Note: The U.S. spends more in GDP on its defense budget than most nations combined spend, and yet we were unable to stop the September 11th attacks or to bring the Afghan War to a quick and decisive close.)
Here are a few questions that have echoed from budget hawks and paleoconservative thinkers like Ron Paul and Paul Ryan.
Why does the United States spend more on Japan's national defense than Japan? Why does the United States continue to spend billions of dollars "protecting" France, Poland, Germany, Australia? Why does the United States continue to militarily defend South Korea when South Korea's military--and economy, is far superior to that of the communist North? Why does NATO still exist, when it's primary mission, to counteract the Soviet threat in Europe, has been won?
Why does the United States spend billions on maintaining large armies, navies, and air force when no other nation poses a direct, existential threat?
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