Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Support for the SAFE Commission (or comparable commission)

All below are quotes, other than titles for each which are mine.

Peter G. Peterson Foundation print ad (President and CEO of PGPF is David Walker, former Comptroller General / Head of GAO) 
we urge creation of an action-oriented bipartisan commission to engage the American people, consider all options, and make sensible recommendations requiring a vote by Congress. Such a commission would be an excellent first step toward improving the government’s financial health. 
http://www.pgpf.org/resources/Peterson_IcebergAd_Summit.pdf

Isabel Sawhill, Senior fellow, Brookings Institution December 1, 2009
We will probably need a bipartisan commission to jump start the process since our political system seems paralyzed by partisanship, but our ability to regain some measure of economic stability may well depend on whether our elected officials can find a way to place the public interest above their own more narrow interests.

Statement offered by members of the Brookings-Heritage Fiscal Seminar. The views expressed are those of the individuals involved and should not be interpreted as representing the views of their respective institutions. For purposes of identification, the affiliation of each signatory is listed. 
the regular political process has been incapable of dealing with long-term fiscal issues. We see no alternative but to create an independent and truly bipartisan commission or other mechanism capable of bringing about decisive action that has broad public support. We therefore urge the President to support such a commission…

Recommendations must go before Congress for an up-or-down vote with few if any amendments. Such a game-changing process is not without precedents; controversial military base closings or the ratification of international trade agreements, for example, have long been governed by special rules along these lines, not by business as usual.

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0219_fiscal_responsiblity_sawhill.aspx


Joe Antos

American Enterprise Institute

Robert Bixby
Concord Coalition

Stuart Butler
Heritage Foundation

Alison Fraser
Heritage Foundation

William Galston
Brookings Institution

Ron Haskins
Brookings Institution

Julia Isaacs
Brookings Institution

Will Marshall
Progressive Policy Institute

Pietro Nivola
Brookings Institution

Rudolph Penner
Urban Institute

Robert Reischauer
Urban Institute

Alice M. Rivlin
Brookings Institution

Isabel Sawhill
Brookings Institution

C. Eugene Steuerle
Peter G. Peterson Foundation

http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/06_commissions_sawhill.aspx 

From paper by The Fiscal Seminar Group (The Fiscal Seminar is a group of scholars who meet on a regular basis, under the auspices of The Brookings Institution and The Heritage Foundation, to discuss federal budget and fiscal policy issues.) November 16, 2009 
the current political environment creates strong disincentives for individual politicians to tackle the tough choices required to put our fiscal house back in order. An appointed commission could offer an alternative mechanism through which to address these thorny but critical issues by undertaking the heavy lifting of developing options and building the political consensus necessary to enact legislation. http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/06_commissions_sawhill.aspx 


Bipartisan Entitlement Commission Needed to Control Spending and Debt
by Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D., Vice President for Domestic and Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
A bipartisan group of seven Senate Budget Committee members, including Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and ranking member Judd Gregg (R-NH), have declared that they will refuse to support an increase in the debt ceiling unless a bill to create a bipartisan fiscal reform commission is included. They see such a commission as essential to tackling the coming tsunami of entitlement spending and deficit red ink that threaten the economy.
The commission idea has surfaced because these members, like others in the Senate and House, have lost patience with the inability of the legislative system to deal with the prospect of runaway entitlement spending and staggering federal debt. They recognize that they, too, are caught up in the procedural and political briar patch that today makes it impossible for Congress to take firm action on spending and debt. They are right to demand a change in the way Congress deals with the problem…
Creating an entitlement commission, properly designed and with clear boundaries, is a critical element to enable Congress to make hard decisions instead of systematically avoiding them…
a commission … does not bypass Congress, but it does make it politically and procedurally easier to enact steps that the parties agree on after hard bargaining…
Some might argue that enacting a commission is merely punting the issue and that it would be better to take strong action now. There has been bipartisan agreement for years that it would be preferable for Congress to tackle the problem directly and immediately--and in that time, the problem has only gotten worse.
[S]upporters of the commission proposal and other measures that should accompany it recognize that the political and procedural barriers to immediate fiscal action are simply too great to overcome. The commission and other procedural measures would create the conditions needed for action to be accomplished. Like an alcoholic recognizing that he or she has a problem, a commission is only the first of several necessary steps, but without it there will be no treatment for the root problem itself…
America …faces a legislative crisis because even lawmakers who recognize the fiscal problem are paralyzed into inaction.
That is why a commission--together with other procedural actions to acknowledge the problem and change the way Washington spends money--is the first and necessary step on the road to recovery. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm2698.cfm 

Washington Post Editorial 1/8/09
Ideally, Congress would make the necessary hard choices through the normal legislative process. Its repeated failure to do so, however, may necessitate a commission to recommend reforms for the House and Senate to accept or reject. Reps. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) have offered proposals for such a panel.


Statement of Maya MacGuineas, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget -- Hearing before the Senate Budget Committee on Bipartisan Process Proposals for Long-Term Fiscal Stability Tuesday, November 10, 2009 
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget supports the creation of a bipartisan commission to help tackle the nation’s long-term fiscal challenges. Our former co-chairman, Leon Panetta, has previously testified in support of such a commission, and many members of our board, myself included, have worked with a number of Members of Congress to develop the details of how such a commission might work. The benefits of a Fiscal Commission are many. It would: 1) send a credible signal to creditors and financial markets that the US is serious about tackling its fiscal challenges; 2) establish a shared fiscal goal; 3) create a bipartisan forum where these issues can be discussed; 4) establish a process to ensure that the recommendations are considered; and 5) lend political cover. First, establishing the budget commission is one potential way to meet the twin goals of sending reassuring signals to markets that we are serious about fiscal rebalancing without implementing contractionary policies too quickly and harming the recovery.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this. If large amounts of borrowing will be necessary to keep the economy from falling back into recession, we need to be able to access to global funds at low rates...
The Peterson Pew Commission on Budget Reform strongly believes that establishing a fiscal goal is a critical part of moving forward on improving the fiscal landscape. We know that the policies to achieve any of these fiscal improvements are difficult, involving spending reductions or tax increases, and in all likelihood both. In the absence of a single fiscal goal, though, it is too easy for lawmakers to oppose any set of hard choices others suggest without offering alternatives…

it will be quite beneficial to create an organized forum where the discussion of how best to achieve these fiscal goals can be hashed out between members of different parties. As a political independent and a member of a bipartisan organization, I strongly believe in the benefits of creating safe environments for bipartisan discourse; environments away from the cameras and the pollsters, where Democrats and Republicans can engage in real policy discussion….

the commission lends the political cover that will be necessary in actually passing a plan that will be effective in stabilizing the budget situation. Any plan that realistically tackles our budgetary challenges is, from a political perspective going to be—to use a technical term—brutal. It is going to involve spending cuts and tax increases, they are going to have to be big, and almost all parts of the budget will take a hit. There is no way that a politician or political party that is understandably concerned about their own future can go out on a limb and advocate any set of policies that will be large enough to fix the problem on their own. The benefit of the commission, or any similar collaborative process, is that each member can support the total package while acknowledging that it is not their first choice and there are parts they do not support on their own. This type of cover will be critical in passing a final agreement….
a Fiscal Commission may well be the best mechanism to jumpstart the process and make the decision making process a bit easier…
…as a mechanism to send a reassuring signal to our creditors, help focus on a single fiscal goal, provide a collaborative environment to work out the details, help move along the final recommendation, and lend political cover, a commission could be immensely helpful. http://crfb.org/document/testimony-maya-macguineas-senate-budget-committee 

(Testimony before Senate Budget Committee) William A. Galston, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies at Brookings…senior fellow at the Brookings Institution as well as a member of the bipartisan Fiscal Seminar convened under the auspices of Brookings and the Heritage Foundation, but testimony was in his “personal capacity, and unless otherwise noted, the views I express are mine alone.”
First, these issues are difficult, engaging them is risky, and in today’s intensely polarized national politics, no one wants to take the first step. Second, ordinary budget procedures are not well designed to address problems that develop over not years but decades. While we need sharp distance vision, what we mostly have is institutional myopia. For these reasons, business as usual is unlikely to produce better fiscal results in the next decade than it has in the past…

Fortunately, there is an alternative—namely, institutions specifically designed to address the problems of polarization and near-sightedness...

There is of course no guarantee that a commission will succeed where ordinary procedures have failed. Because fiscal policy raises issues that go to the heart of partisan and ideological definition in our politics today, a commission could yield yet more gridlock. And there is a possibility that both Congress and the White House could use a commission to evade their own responsibilities and defer a debate that needs to occur. Nonetheless, the potential gains outweigh the possible costs. http://www.brookings.edu/testimony/2009/1110_senate_budget_galston.aspx 

By Bob Kerrey and Warren Rudman -- Washington Post Op-Ed, August 28, 2006
Since the regular legislative process seems incapable of dealing with the impending crisis, some alternative has to be found. President Bush has suggested a commission. Having served on many commissions, we understand their potential value. We also understand how they can go wrong. In our view, a new commission could be very useful, but only if it recognizes fiscal and political realities. It needs five elements to succeed.
First, it has to be truly bipartisan. Any perception that the commission's purpose is to facilitate swift enactment of a partisan agenda would doom it to failure. It must have bipartisan co-chairs and equal representation. Doing otherwise in the current partisan environment would be a waste of time and money.
Second, it must have a broad mandate. While it is critical to control the growth of entitlements, particularly Medicare and Social Security, the commission should examine all aspects of fiscal policy.
Third, all options must be on the table. If either side sets conditions, the other won't participate. Republicans cannot take tax increases off the table, and Democrats cannot take benefit reductions off the table.
Fourth, the commission needs to engage the public in a genuine dialogue about the trade-offs inherent in realistic solutions. When people are armed with the facts and given the opportunity for honest dialogue, they are willing to set priorities and make hard choices.
Fifth, the commission's recommendations should be given an up-or-down vote in Congress, allowing for amendments that would not reduce the total savings. Absent that, the report would likely join many others on a shelf.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) have put forward a proposal that satisfies most of these elements. They would create a bipartisan commission with a broad mandate to examine long-term fiscal challenges. All policy options would be on the table. The commission would solicit input from the public and develop legislation that Congress and the president would be required to act on. Its work would address four key concerns: the unsustainable gap between projected spending and revenue, the need to increase national savings, the implications of foreign ownership of U.S. government debt and the lack of emphasis on long-term planning in the budget process.
A commission with these attributes could give all parties the political cover they need to tackle the tough choices and develop a bipartisan consensus for solutions. This would be invaluable regardless of who controls Congress or the White House.
In the end, of course, elected representatives, not a commission, will have to make the hard decisions. But a commission that produced solutions with meaningful bipartisan support would provide a catalyst for action. If Congress were required to vote on the commission's recommendations, opponents would be challenged to produce solutions of their own.
Advocates of extending tax cuts would be challenged to say how they would restrain spending enough to avoid cascading debt once the baby boomers begin to retire in large numbers. Those who oppose reductions in current entitlement promises would be challenged to say how they would fund those promises without squeezing out other priorities or raising taxes to unacceptable levels that could damage the economy.
…Time is running out to enact reforms. Wolf and Voinovich have come up with a credible way to get the process started. Any takers?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR2006082700557.html


Blue Dog Coalition Endorses SAFE Commission Act
[From the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget website]
Nov 20 2009
The Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, a group comprised of fiscally conservative members of the House, officially endorsed [2] the Securing America’s Future Economy (SAFE) Commission Act (H.R. 1557). The bill, introduced by Representatives Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Jim Cooper (D-TN), would establish a fiscal reform commission to develop legislation to address the country’s unsustainable imbalance between long-term spending commitments and projected revenues.
The SAFE Commission would create a 16-member panel, including the Treasury Secretary, OMB Director, four members appointed by the Senate Majority Leader, four by the Speaker of the House, three by the Senate Minority Leader, and three by the House Minority Leader (with no more than a total of four Members of Congress on the commission).
On Nov. 10, Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, testified before the Senate Budget Committee [3] on bipartisan process proposals for long-term fiscal stability. She argued that while a commission could be first step and not a final resolution of the country’s serious fiscal situation, a commission could be extremely helpful in focusing on a single fiscal goal, in providing a forum for working out the details, and in signaling to our creditors that we are serious about bringing down the debt. http://crfb.org/print/1743


Alan Greenspan, Dec 17, 2009 TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE HEARING ON SAFEGUARDING THE AMERICAN DREAM: PROSPECTS FOR OUR ECONOMIC FUTURE AND PROPOSALS TO SECURE IT, AS RELEASED BY THE COMMITTEE

The recommendation of Senators Conrad and Gregg for a bipartisan Fiscal taskforce is an excellent idea.  http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=25151&docId=l:1094418092&isRss=true

No comments: