Debt panel leaders call for more cuts

[Geee]

The Hill:


Neither the White House budget nor the congressional Republican spending plan are focused on the long-term drivers of the budget deficit, the co-chairmen of President Obama’s debt commission write in Thursday’s issue of The Hill.

In an op-ed, former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Democrat Erskine Bowles write that by focusing “primarily on domestic discretionary spending, neither plan goes at all far enough to deal with our medium- or long-term fiscal challenges.”

Simpson and Bowles, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, argue that no serious budget initiative can ignore dealing with Social Security and Medicare, and that Obama must lead a bipartisan effort to tackle the issue or things will just get worse.
“The nation desperately needs bipartisan leadership grounded in shared sacrifice, not politics as usual,” the op-ed states. “Cynics argue that such comprehensive reform is politically impossible. To the contrary, it is the only sensible way to put in place policies that can prevent a fiscal disaster.”

Simpson and Bowles led a presidential commission that recommended entitlement and tax reforms as well as cuts to defense and non-security discretionary spending that would have reduced the deficit by almost $4 trillion over the next decade.