Getting real

The Senate this week voted down a proposal co-sponsored by Senator Kent Conrad, (D. North Dakota), the chairman of the Budget Committee, and Senator Judd Gregg (R. New Hampshire), the committee’s senior Republican, to create a bipartisan commission (8 Republicans and 8 Democrats, plus two administration officials) that would recommend to Congress a package of deficit-reduction steps that Congress would have to vote on, and could not amend (eg. tinker with to give individual member’s supporters sweetheart deals or exemptions) .

It failed, 53 for and 46 against, because some Democrats were unwilling to be forced to face cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and some Republicans were unwilling to consider tax increases, both likely features of any effective deficit-reduction package.

This reflects the unwillingness of our Congressional representatives in both parties to get real and face the fact that something has to give in the face of the growing deficit. Either we raise taxes to increase the government’s income, or we cut spending to reduce the government’s expenditures, or more likely both. There is no free lunch.

President Obama proposes instead to create the commission by Executive Order, but unlike the original proposed commission, Congress won’t be required to give their recommendations an up-or-down vote, and will probably just ignore them as it has the recommendations of other Presidential Commissions (think of the 9/11 Commission, for example, most of whose recommendations have still not been implemented).

So what will it take for Congress to get real?