Three Democratic senators — Max Baucus, John Kerry and Patty Murray — will be tapped to serve on a deficit reduction super committee, a Senate aide told Reuters on Tuesday.
If this is true, it’s great news. Kerry has been very strong on the right and the wrong way to go about deficit reduction. Here’s hoping the rumor holds, and that Kerry is able to bring along some of his more recalcitrant colleagues *cough*Baucus*cough*.
In other debt-related news, Scott Brown apparently isn’t a big fan of, you know, reading. When asked about the role politics played in the infamous S&P downgrade, Brown retorted:
“It wasn’t the gridlock,” he said. “Could that have contributed to it? Sure.”
Uh, Scott? This is what S&P actually said (emphasis mine):
We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process…. The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures….
Our opinion is that elected officials remain wary of tackling the structural issues required to effectively address the rising U.S. public debt burden in a manner consistent with a ‘AAA’ rating and with ‘AAA’ rated sovereign peers. In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government’s ability to manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal stringency and private-sector deleveraging.
And there’s more where that came from. We can argue ’til we’re blue in the face about whether S&P should have done what it did, but there’s very little room for debate on why they acted. Gridlock was a huge part of it.
JimC says
Does this mean the Secretary of State job is off the table?
David says
SuperCongress’s work is supposed to be done this year. SoS, if it happens, would presumably be in Obama’s second term.
JimC says
Kerry has a certain above-the-frayness to him. SuperCongress will shift that slightly. I don’t think it rules out SOS, but it makes it seem less likely.
doubleman says
With Kerry and Baucus two of three, I think we’re going to get rolled. Baucus is terrible, and although Kerry usually votes the right away, I don’t think he can bring others along. When it comes to tough negotiations he would not be my pick. I especially don’t trust him to cut defense over Medicare.
I hope the House can put together a stronger team.
stomv says
and, as such, I think he’s ripe to compromise things away. That’s OK maybe, but I fear the GOP won’t be… and won’t be willing to raise taxes. Then, will Kerry turn himself in knots arguing that other things are just like revenue enhancements, and therefore its perfectly OK that he gave away the things the Dems hold dear?
I don’t know. I hope not. I also hope Kerry is willing to substantially slash the DoD budget, despite its impact on the Massachusetts economy.
mannygoldstein says
From Kerry’s Sunday interview on Meet the Press:
As I wrote on BMG on Sunday, this is a very surprising and disturbing statement. Particularly since I called Kerry’s office a couple of weeks ago and they swore he was against any sort of Social Security cuts at all.
Social Security has zero solvency problems, unless we assume that the economy is about to get even worse and stay that way for decades. Even then, if very bad things happen to our economy, it’s perfectly fine for more than two decades.
Medicare/Medicaid don’t have problems, either. Rather, the problem is with runaway health care costs. If our costs are brought in line with the rest of the industrialized world, then Medicare and Medicare are perfectly fine. Otherwise we harm all Americans with punishing health care costs, and make our businesses uncompetitive when they pay for health care.
Once again, even Democrats like Kerry see working Americans as easier targets than the people actually causing these problems. This is awful.
I realize that drawing a line in the sand on Social Security is not a Sensible Adult position – in fact, it doesn’t even seem to be a popular position on BMG. But I’m pleased that at least some Democrats, such as Barney Frank and Howard Dean want to do the right thing here.
fenway49 says
certainly should be drawn on Social Security. As noted, it’s solvent for decades. Any projected problems after that could be solved quite easily by (1) improving growth; (2) raising the withholding ceiling, currently around $107K.
When Reagan and Tip O’Neill reached their deal in the mid-80s (boy, does Reagan seem almost quaint now), the plan was to have 90% of income in the nation subject to SS withholding. Due to the flow of income to the top, the system was capturing only about 84%. The top 1 percent having almost a quarter of national income, there’s a lot of income (even wage income) above the threshold. It could be raised, or (as candidate Obama floated)
SS does NOT contribute to the deficit. It’s solvent, and in recent years in fact has been LENDING money to the gov’t for general budget spending.
Naturally, however, this is lost in the shuffle as Democrats are lining up to suggest ways to slash it. And Obama, in his December 2010 deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, cut SS withholding from 6.2% to 4.2% for this year. He’d like to extend that, perhaps forever. Of course, taking in almost one third less in 2011 (and perhaps succeeding years) will hurt the program’s solvency.
Step 1: Take office in a time of economic contraction and rising unemployment.
Step 2: Present a stimulus plan too weak to fix the problem.
Step 3: Cut Social Security withholding as a half-ditch effort at “stimulus.”
Step 4: Refer to the non-existent pre-existing “crisis” as a fact, buttressed by the new crisis of your own creation.
Step 5: Do the “responsible” thing that “folks on the left” aren’t going to like: Slash SS benefits.
Al says
Republicans have put up stanch, anti tax, conservatives as their members of the committee. This group has fully signed on to Grover Norquist’s anti tax promise, and can be counted on to block any kind of tax or revenue enhancement, period. Their naming shows the tactics Republicans plan to use, and the phoniness of any talk of compromise for any good from them.