Something is noticeably absent from congressional candidates’ rampant finger-wagging over this month’s bipartisan deal to extend the nation’s borrowing limit and reopen government: concrete proposals to fundamentally alter the U.S. balance sheet.
Blame politics as the chief reason for the lack of solutions offered by 2014 incumbents and challengers.
Influential Democratic backers go to the mat to protect Social Security and Medicare. Republicans love defense spending, while key GOP groups boast absolute opposition to higher taxes.
Voters across the spectrum enjoy public benefits and historically low income tax rates, plus a web of credits, deductions and exemptions.
Those dynamics add up to long odds that Congress and President Barack Obama can fundamentally restructure the budget anytime soon, as both sides insist they want to do in the face of a nearly $17 trillion debt that exceeds the U.S. economy’s annual output.
Most candidates generally dispute the notion that they aren’t pitching ideas. Others acknowledge that details often are lacking, but they argue that campaigns aren’t the place to get into policy particulars that opponents can use as daggers.
Politicians “have been tickling their constituents for so long,” said former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., that neither voters nor campaigns know another way, particularly after a decade marked by multiple tax cuts, two wars, a new Medicare drug program, a severe economic downturn and, predictably, soaring annual deficits.
Simpson co-chaired a bipartisan commission that in 2010 recommended spending overhauls and tax increases. Obama and congressional leaders praised their effort but ignored the plan.
The Oct. 16 shutdown deal funds government through Jan. 15. It raised the Treasury Department’s borrowing limit enough to last a several weeks beyond that. There were no changes to Obama’s health care law, as Republicans had demanded. House Republicans agreed to formal budget talks with Senate Democrats. All that means the fiscal debate will continue into early next year.
In Georgia this month, Democrat Michelle Nunn, a U.S. Senate hopeful, blasted the shutdown deal.
“Congress’ short-term deal sets up for yet another potential shutdown,” she wrote to supporters. In an op-ed, she said that “neither side has been serious about … making the hard choices necessary to reduce the national debt.”
Three of Nunn’s potential rivals — U.S. Reps. Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and Jack Kingston — were among 144 House Republicans who voted against the deal.
Republicans hammered Obama because his health care law rolls back subsidies for supplemental Medicare coverage. Obama promised as a candidate not to raise taxes on the middle class — referring mainly to income tax rates. Low capital gains rates, deductions for charitable giving and mortgage interest and many breaks for businesses remain broadly popular among the public and Congress.
Simpson said his commission sought a common-sense approach: admit that government operations cost money and sudden steep cuts can damage the economy, while recognizing that the recent trajectory, left unchecked, promises to scare investors who buy treasury debt, triggering rising interest rates that also would hamstring the economy.
Kingston acknowledged the puzzle.
Referring to Social Security, he said, “At the starting point, everything should be on the table.” Yet when asked whether that included raising the cap on income subject to payroll tax, he added, “The problem is if I answer that question in a silo, I hear about it immediately.”
About the Author
