It's amazing how the coverage of the Chairman's mark -- a rough draft or working paper, basically -- from the Fiscal Commission treats it as though it were the official report, due December 1. It is not! It represents the thinking of two people on the commission, not all 18 members. Why would they release a draft so early and dilute the impact of their actual report? Because, I'm guessing, there will not be much consensus in the final document. The commission, designed to bridge partisan differences, is thus a failure.
While the release I've seen does not give us enough numbers for proper analysis, the ultimate problem with the substance of the report is, as Kevin Drum writes, "this document isn't really aimed at deficit reduction. It's aimed at keeping government small." And it's true, most obviously in the cap on revenue. Let me say it simply, let me say it loud: There's just no way your deficit reform is going to include lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans while ending the Earned Income Tax Credit. It is just not going to happen while Democrats have votes.
It occurs to me that conservatives and liberals still aren't speaking the same language on this. On the teevees last night I was talking about this report with National Review's Stephen Spruiell, who said something like "this is the right mix of spending cuts and revenue increases for an austerity budget." He's right about that, but this isn't a Budget Austerity Commission -- it's a fiscal sustainability commission. The United States is not Greece or Ireland, and we don't need an austerity budget. We need to get our long-term spending under control, cut needless expenditures today, and raise revenue to make up the remaining difference. This report has good ideas in it for spending cuts and tax reforms, but there's still no agreement.
It's worth noting that the dynamics here continue to favor conservatives; simply put, the longer we delay making sustainable budgeting decisions, the harder it becomes to make them, increasing the likelihood that we will one day face calamity, and austerity. "The concern from the progressive perspective is that if we wait until we have a gun to our head ... at that point we're unlikely to get progressive solutions," CAP's Michael Ettlinger told me last year when I wrote about progressive efforts to get ahead of the deficit debate. It makes getting these issues right today even more of a priority.
-- Tim Fernholz
