From The Nation
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
failed to produce a mandate for assaulting Social Security,
undermining Medicare and Medicaid and generally balancing the budget on
the backs of working Americans.
But that hasn't stopped its co-chairmen from claiming a sort of
victory for their plan to make Main Street pay for Wall Street's
failures.
Their goal is obvious. Commission co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine
Bowles want to spin a win they did not achieve in order to foster the
false impression that their ominously titled " Moment of Truth" proposal is the only real alternative to fiscal ruin. That's not the case. There are better proposals--such as the detailed alternative to austerity outlined by commission member Jan Schakowsky.
But this is a critical juncture, and progressives need to be conscious
that an effort will be made to narrow the range of options and impose
key elements of a bad plan that failed to gain required support.
Let's start by getting a few things straight:
The commission was given a clear charge when President Obama cobbled
it together in February--after failing to win congressional support for
the formal launch of the project.
The commission was to come up with a plan to address deficits, debts and
the challenge of maintaining a federal government at a point when
revenues are not sufficient to keep paying for every war, bailout and
boondoggle that comes along.
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Proposals for what could be radical, and in many cases painful,
change had to attract broad support, so the president said that at least
fourteen of the eighteen members of the commission would need to back
an initiative before he would promote it. Senate majority leader Harry
Reid and House speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to hold votes this year
to see if a consensus could be reached.
On Friday, the commission co-chairs failed to get to fourteen.
Only eleven members of the commission voted "yes," while seven voted
"no." And the seven "no" votes came from precisely the members whose
votes were most needed if this plan was to have legitimacy. Three House
conservatives--incoming Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin;
incoming Ways and Means Committee chair Dave Camp, R-Michigan; and
incoming Republicans Conference chair Jeb Henserling, R-Texas--voted "no"
because they did not think it went far enough in calling for tax cuts
and the gutting of entitlement programs.
Two key House Democrats, Xavier Beccera, D-California, and Jan
Schakowsky, D-Illinois, voted "no" because, as Schakowsky explained it,
the proposed benefit cuts would have meant that "those who have not
joined the prosperity party the last couple years are being asked to
pick up too much of the tab."
Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, D-Montana, also voted
"no," as did former Service Employees International Union president Andy
Stern.
Opposition from the right and the left--including that of the
legislators who will chair the House Budget and Senate Finance
committees in the new Congress--is significant, as is the opposition of
the most clearly identifiable representative of working Americans on the
panel.
But commission co-chairs Simpson and Bowles, who went rogue last
month and started promoting a proposal that lacked broad backing, were
going to claim a mandate no matter what vote they got. Bowles declared
victory, claiming that the panel had opened an "adult conversation"
about cutting the deficit. Simpson, the former Republican senator from
Wyoming who was the driving force on the commission, chirped: "I will walk home proudly, with my head held high."
Simpson is proud of his plan, and of the fact that he and Bowles won
some unexpected votes for austerity--including that of the number-two
Democrat in the Senate, Illinois's Dick Durbin. But what they aren't
highlighting is the fact that Durbin announced that he was voting for
the plan in order to "to kick-start an adult debate," not because he thought it was sound.
Pointing out that opposed many of the proposal's provisions and
would not necessarily have backed it if it came to a Congressional
vote, Durbin explained that: "I want progressive voices at the table
arguing that we must protect the most vulnerable."
So what is the progressive alternative?
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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
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