The majority of the Democrats and Republicans that populate this city’s institutions are career professionals and public servants. For the most part, their expertise has served us well. Yet my worry is that maybe, somewhere, there is another Abraham Lincoln. Someone we would mock, someone who didn’t go to an Ivy League school, someone who made it on his or her own.
Like Lincoln, they could change everything. They could right the wrongs and redraw America’s path forward. Realistically, even Lincoln couldn’t make it today, and that saddens me deeply. Lincoln’s story is the story of this nation and what it should be — but isn’t anymore. There will be no more Lincolns because our political system punishes those who are willing to speak the truth and make the tough decisions. Who’s brave enough to put tomorrow before today?
Families across the country have spent the past two years altering their spending habits. Some have taken on another job, others have downsized to smaller homes. People are doing more with less, as they shop for the best deals and cut entertainment costs. There’s a growing feeling that the same sort of waist trimming should be applied here in Washington.
To close the annual budget deficit and reduce the national debt, shared sacrifice is a necessity. It’s ludicrous to think that we could have continued our tired tradition of more spending, more borrowing and less taxes without paying a price. The cruelty of making promises we can’t keep is immeasurable.
The co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, recently released their proposal for addressing our fiscal mess. Their blueprint, which is separate from the commission’s larger report due out Dec. 1, calls for spending caps on major domestic and defense programs. They want a simplified tax code that reduces overall rates and closes loopholes. On health care, they emphasize malpractice reform and long-term cost containment. Retirement pensions for federal workers would be slashed and the Social Security age would be raised to achieve the program’s solvency. Everybody would take a hit.
Although predictable, partisan reaction to the proposal was distressing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the terms “unacceptable.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that the co-chairs had essentially told working Americans to “drop dead.” To those politicians who subscribe to his no-tax pledge, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, warned that the plan didn’t pass the test. Here’s a timeless rule to help you cut through the political haze: Any idea, policy, or proposal that conservatives and liberals bash is probably the best course of action.
Selling a plan in Congress that lays out nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020 will be infinitely difficult. The co-chairs knew that they were asking so much of legislators who, for so long, had done so little. The purpose was to start a discussion, to get people, as New York Times columnist David Brooks put it, “to look beyond their short-term financial interest to see the long-term national threat.” Right now, politicians have no incentives to make the hard bargains. They are elected to produce immediate results, so few find supporting unpopular cuts or tax hikes very worthwhile.
In the current environment, I don’t have much hope for the recommendations of the president’s commission. I do believe that the group’s report, coupled with emerging plans from other fiscal commissions in the policy realm, will successfully raise the tenor of the debate over how we want to leave the world to our children and grandchildren. I doubt that something along the lines of Brazil’s Fiscal Crimes Law, which bars politicians who overspend from running for reelection, will catch on in the U.S. I’m waiting for a show of bravery from leaders who want to tackle these problems before a grave meltdown puts everyone on notice.