Any quaint notion that Congress’s efforts to rein in our deficit would be smooth sailing went out the window in the last 48 hours. 

Ahead of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's December 1 deadline for a final report, Co-Chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson released their draft proposal. Intended to spur discussion, the report instead has been battered about by waves of parochial pandering that are all too common when it comes to actual spending decisions. It's barely been two days, and lawmakers and interest groups across the spectrum are already leaping to attack almost every proposed reform.

• “This proposal is simply unacceptable,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
   
• “Just a dirty trick for raising taxes,” Grover Norquist , president of Americans for Tax Reform
   
• “If this comes to the fore, we will do everything we can to nip it in the bud,” Jerry Howard , president of the National Association of Home Builders
   
•  “The chairmen of the deficit commission just told working Americans to 'drop dead,’” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka
   
• “There are things in there that inspire me, and there are things in there that I hate like the devil hates holy water. I'm not going to vote for this thing,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

First off, let’s remember how we got here. Over the last 40 years we’ve run an annual budget surplus just four times. Both parties have been guilty of massive deficit spending . Meanwhile, Congress may soon make permanent the three-trillion-dollar-plus Bush Tax Cuts, which according to the Congressional Budget Office “would roughly double the projected budget deficit in 2020,” without future increases in taxes or reductions in federal spending, and “reduce long-term economic growth.” One last binge before we get serious about our budgetary problems? 

This year Congress not only failed to pass a budget that set the country on a long term path of stability, but more than a month into the new fiscal year they still have yet to send a single one of the twelve spending bills to the President’s desk. And when given the opportunity to craft their own budget commission with recommendations they would have been required to vote on, Congress dodged, leading President Obama to create this less powerful commission by way of Executive Order .

Getting the country fiscally fit is going to be rough, but as they say – no pain, no gain. Politics and grandstanding should not deter the Commission and Congress as we move ahead. These proposals challenge the Commission, Congress, and taxpayers to face the kind of hard decisions we must make if there is any hope of steering the government’s finances away from the rocky shoal of deficits and debt.

Just like a house, a sustainable budget must be built on a solid foundation. And the best way to lay this foundation is by adopting the most common sense and effective reforms. As taxpayers we can all agree—in good times and in bad—that none of us wants our tax dollars wasted. So we cannot afford to squander this opportunity to rid the budget of ineffective and wasteful spending.

Rather than leaving the Co-chairs’ proposal dead in the water, let's start with some reforms that, at least to those of us making a living outside the DC lobby shops and campaign offices, are just common sense: tightening our belt on domestic and defense spending, tweaking Social Security to make it more sustainable, cutting ineffective tax expenditures. And once we’ve begun this process, we can build on our successes and continue the difficult task of righting our fiscal ship. 
 

Wastebasket Quote of the Week:

“We have harpooned every whale in the ocean and some of the minnows.”

–Alan Simpson, Co-chair National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.  (Bloomberg Businessweek)