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I do not think it is necessary – or would even be beneficial – to demand of commission members public, a priori agreement on ideological compromise even in principle (i.e., Republicans agreeing to at least some tax increases and Democrats agreeing to at least some reductions in projected entitlement spending and other social spending), nor to demand of them agreement upfront on particular targets for deficits and debt, other than at least meeting the particular target for 2015 that Obama has assigned to them.
While the commission has been assigned by Obama a particular goal for 2015, the overall goals of such a commission should be to (1) develop a politically viable plan to get us on a fiscal course that is sustainable and avoids excessive economic harm and risk (or at least gets us substantially closer to such a course), (2) identify trade-offs related to alternative plans, (3) to try to shape public opinion to affect that political viability now of the commission’s recommended plan, and (4) to increase the political viability of implementation of either the commission’s plan or adoption and implementation of some other subsequent plan in the future.
Goal #1 would be based on a target debt/GDP curve – i.e., the plan’s projected debt/GDP each year for the next 20 or 30 years (even with the greater level of uncertainty the farther out projections go). The target curve reflects not only the longer-term debt/GDP target(s), but also targets for earlier years, reflecting the path to the longer term (when and to what degree to reduce debt/GDP along the way). Target deficits for each year are implicit in the debt/GDP curve target. The plan would, of course, lay out how to achieve that target debt/GDP curve via fiscal policy (spending and revenue sides) per assumptions regarding current GDP outlook and dynamic effects on that GDP baseline of fiscal policy changes, as well as underlying assumptions regarding interest rates, healthcare inflation, etc.
It is indeed best if at least 14 members of the commission are at least privately open to the possibility of a combination approach of tax increases and reductions in projected spending, as opposed to insistent on all of one or the other. But I don’t think it is necessary – and probably not even wise – to require that would-be commission members from each “side” publicly accept, even just in principle (without specifics), this ideological compromise a priori as a pre-condition for a commission getting started.
On the other hand, anyone (particularly politicians) who have publicly taken a hard stand against such compromise would likely obstruct to the extent they could any agreement by the commission on a recommendation, since any recommendation the commission can achieve is highly likely to reflect such a compromise. Thus, such individuals are highly undesirable as commission members, and enough of them could indeed doom the commission to failure to reach agreement on a recommendation, although there is some chance that even such individuals could end up supporting a compromise approach (or at least compromise in principle) if the commission lays out an alternative per that member’s supposed ideological ideal and if he/she sees supporting the sacrifices therein as even more politically costly than supporting the compromise approach. There is, therefore, a significant difference between requiring commission members to agree in principle on ideological compromise a priori vs. presenting them (and their constituents) with alternative plans and related trade-offs and then seeking their agreement on compromise.
Even such a “failure” scenario would most likely be better than no commission at all, since at least the commission would likely identify the trade-offs, and the public could then see how much of what must be sacrificed in order to take an extreme, ideological pure approach, and posturing hyperpartisan politicians (and to a lesser extent, media ideologue blowhards) could then be held accountable to at least some extent for the types of pain they wish to impose on the people in lieu of the types of pain they prefer to avoid. Those on the right who refuse to accept tax increases would have to explain why it’s better to, say, reduce seniors’ benefits by X% rather than to combine at least some tax increase with a less severe reduction in those seniors’ benefits. Similarly, those on the left who insist on maintaining projected spending (at least for much of the budget) would have to explain to voters why tax increases of Y% are preferable to a combination of at least some reductions in projected spending combined with less severe tax increases. The result of the above could be a change in the political calculus that is conducive to achieving a solution (which, in terms of political plausibility, must be a compromise, combination approach) sooner than would occur otherwise, even though not via this commission.
In addition to making clearer to the public the trade-offs from an ideological perspective, the commission could also make clearer to the public the trade-off between accepting a higher overall scale of sacrifice now (i.e., greater reduction in our projected fiscal imbalance sooner rather than later) vs. delaying sacrifice to a greater extent.
The above two potential effects could diminish the two main obstacles to fiscal responsibility: (1) Insistence by some of ideological purity largely due to unrealistic views of what is politically feasible and, in many cases, also a lack of understanding of the trade-offs, and (2) a general resistance to substantial sacrifice regardless of ideology (people unwilling to pay more in taxes but also unwilling to forego spending when programs are identified specifically.
Similarly, the commission can lay out alternatives and related trade-offs regarding both the long-term target debt/GDP and the speed with which to get there, so commission members will be in a better position to choose, in effect, among alternative trade-offs after the commission has conducted some of it’s work than before, and it’s not necessary for them to agree on particular targets upfront, although I would think at least some consideration of such targets would precede consideration of alternative fiscal plans. Ideally, time and resources permitting, a commission would develop alternatives along at least two dimensions: (1) different debt/GDP curves, with discussion of related differences in costs and risks of carrying the respective levels of debt/GDP, and (2) alternative fiscal plans to achieve each debt/GDP curve.
