Eleven days and counting. Then the debt ceiling clock strikes midnight and the federal budget turns into a pumpkin. Bottom line is the country cannot afford the shock wave this would send through the worldwide economy and the increased interest rates the government would pay to service our debt. But the other bottom line is we can’t afford continuing to pile on to the $14.3 trillion we already owe. We must get our nation’s fiscal house in order before it crumbles around us.

First things first, stop the brinksmanship, pass a bill to lift the debt ceiling, and do it fast.  There should be trillions of dollars in savings attached, but the debt ceiling has to be lifted. The ratings agencies have spoken — just lifting the debt ceiling and throwing a few trillion dollars of savings will not necessarily be enough to keep our Aaa bond rating. There must be a comprehensive budget plan to lead the country out of the fiscal wilderness.

This week the so-called Gang of Six came out with a plan. There’s something in there for everyone: spending cuts, tax reform, and entitlement changes. Of course that also means there’s something in there for everyone to hate. Sounds like a good start to us!

The plan isn’t perfect. To start, it lacks specifics. Some details aren’t fleshed out and it’s hard to confidently track the numbers. For instance, it’s unclear which budget baseline they use — which makes it hard to know how much of the savings are real, or not worth the paper they are printed on. And a lot of decision-making on the cuts is tasked to the committees, including the tax reform package which calls for lower overall rates and fewer brackets, elimination of tax expenditures that complicate the code, and abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax.

But instead of looking for flaws, let’s focus on the bigger picture. This bi-partisan group—three Republican and three Democratic Senators—picked up the president’s deficit commission report from last year and made a plan. This is a start. We’re willing to help. We released cut lists earlier this year, and, working with the Project on Government Oversight, came up with $600 billion in low-hanging fruit defense cuts.

But across the Capitol, House Republicans passed the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan seeking immediate spending cuts, budgetary caps limiting the size of government with respect to GDP, and a form of constitutional “balanced budget” amendment (BBA). The Gang of Six plan has cuts and caps, but what about the BBA?

A balanced budget amendment would be simple. Spending cannot exceed revenues from the previous year unless there is a two-thirds vote by both Houses. Done.

The proposed amendment does this in the first 50 words. But then it goes on for another 500 words to detail the exceptions, caps on government, oh and interest on that $14.3 trillion pile of debt — it doesn’t count. These loopholes and minutiae reveal a fundamental problem with balanced budget amendments. Lawmakers find ways to avoid them. Setting up a situation where Congress routinely end-runs the Constitution is wrong-headed.

And to be clear, balanced budget amendments do not lead to fiscal responsibility nirvana. Just look around at the more than 40 states with constitutional balanced budget amendments. Many of them are still in dire fiscal straights and resorting to all sorts of gimmicks to get around making the tough decisions of what to cut or where to raise revenue. We don’t need a constitutional amendment to pass a balanced budget, we need fiscal accountability in Washington.

Regardless, the House passed “Cut, Cap, and Balance” and the Senate voted it down. So the time has come for both parties in both chambers to roll up their sleeves, raise the debt ceiling with a package of cuts and then get to work. Any plan should spread out the budget cut pain, eliminate wasteful tax breaks, reform the code to be simpler, and reform entitlement programs to make them affordable. The country can’t afford anything less.

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TCS Quote of the Week

“Jeopardizing our country’s credit rating and fiscal security by refusing to compromise isn’t the answer.”

– R. Bruce Josten, U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive vice president for government affairs. Politico