Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson, the two co-chairmen of the President’s bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, put out a new plan to address our long-term debt problems. They welcome the deficit reductions implemented through the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer’s Relief Act or so-called fiscal cliff deal of 2013, but they believe that much more is needed to stabilize our debt problem.
There is some good and bad in the new plan. The best thing about it is that in a town where the Senate hasn’t bothered producing a budget — its most fundamental job — in four years, and where most lawmakers are more interested in political posturing than addressing the country’s long-term financial problems, Simpson and Bowles at least offer a plan. Granted, this plan is best described as the plan for a plan, but in that outline form it is still more than we have gotten from the Senate in years.
