Facing dire warnings about the size of the nation’s deficit and no solution to shrink it in sight, a top Democratic lawmaker announced Thursday that his committee may override President Obama’s recently appointed debt commission and craft its own long-term solution to the budget crisis. Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., suggested that Obama was sidestepping the deficit issue and, with his presidential panel of debt commissioners unable to agree on a plan, leaving the crisis in limbo.
“I’m going to be having discussions with members of the committee on both sides to see what the feeling would be about our taking this on and laying a plan before our colleagues,” Conrad said.
Conrad made the remarks after hearing from Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf, who told the committee that action must be taken immediately to shrink the size of the deficit, which he predicted would total nearly $1.5 trillion this year, or 9.8 percent of gross domestic product.
Elmendorf warned that the nation was at risk of reaching a “tipping point” similar to Greece and Ireland, which are no longer able to finance their own debt.
“To prevent debt from becoming unsupportable, the Congress will have to substantially restrain the growth of spending, raise revenues significantly above their historical share of GDP or pursue some combination of those approaches,” Elmendorf said.
Congress, however, has been unwilling to commit to a plan to cut spending or raise taxes. Obama’s 18-member, bipartisan debt commission this summer issued a report calling for $200 billion in spending cuts, increasing the gas tax and raising the retirement age to 69 by 2075. But the panel didn’t have the votes to pass the plan, so its recommendations won’t be sent to Congress. Even if the debt panel had agreed on the plan, there is no law to force the House or Senate to vote on the recommendations.
Republicans, now the majority in the House, are ready to fill the void with their own solutions for cutting the deficit, which involve slashing non-defense spending in budgets starting this year. But their plan isn’t likely to pass the Democratic-led Senate and probably won’t result in significant spending reductions.
Lawmakers have increasingly looked to Obama to take the lead on deficit reduction. Conrad favors holding a summit with congressional leaders at the White House to devise a deficit-reduction plan, but acknowledged that such a meeting may never happen.
The panel’s ranking member, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., slammed Obama for not going far enough in his deficit-reduction proposals in his State of the Union address. In that speech, Obama called for a five-year freeze in discretionary spending.
“It was a timid speech,” Sessions said. “It squandered a historic opportunity to rally the American people behind true spending reform. He had the opportunity to look them in the eye, say what the real dangers we’re facing are and call on us to meet the challenges.”
