The Debt Commission Report

It took a year, but the 18 member commission has finally issued its report on the best way to reduce our growing national debt and to get government spending under control. This report is a step in the right direction, but in my opinion it falls far short of curbing outrageous government spending habits. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that congress and the president will enact the report into law simply because it will alienate a large portion of the electorate and the far left that who loves spending other people’s money. There are four main areas tackled by the debt commission to reduce debt: discretionary spending, tax reform, healthcare, and social security.

For discretionary spending cuts the commission proposes cuts to be implemented by 2015 on both domestic and military budgets. The plan calls for 100 billion dollars in cuts to both domestic and military budgets. Cuts to the military budget include closing bases, reforming the military and civil service retirement plan, and to implement cuts proposed by Secretary of the Defense, Robert Gates. Domestic cuts include a 10% cut to the federal workforce, a 3 year freeze on federal employee raises, eliminating earmarks, reducing agriculture subsidies, implementing a 15 cent tax on a gallon of gas, and creating a slush fund in case of an emergency.

The debt commissions’ plan to tackle tax reform is basically to simplify our convoluted tax code. The plan calls for fewer and lower tax rate brackets. There will be only 3 tax brackets: 23% (down from 35%), 14% (down from 28%), and 8% (down from 15%). The corporate tax rate will also be reduced from 35% to 26%. The catch is that the government will do away with popular deductions such as property taxes, mortgage payments, and earned income credits.

The plan to reform social security consists of gradually increasing the retirement age. Today, the retirement age is 67 for people born after 1960. Under the plan the retirement age will be raised to 68 by 2050 and 69 by 2075. This is reasonable because life expectancies in the U.S. are increasing faster than the retirement age. Other reforms to the social security system are to gradually increase the taxable maximum cap on salaries and to provide smaller annual increases in benefit payments.

The final thing the debt commission tackled was our ever increasing healthcare expenditures in our country. Oddly, this is exactly what ObamaCare legislation claims to have done, but even the bipartisan debt commission realizes ObamaCare will only make healthcare more expensive. The plan calls for conservative ideas such as medical malpractice reform, reduced payments to doctors and medical providers, paying for quality service and not quantity, and addressing the doctor fix. The plan should have done more to tackle big pharmaceutical companies and increasing drug costs.

The bottom line is that very tough decisions have to be made and you can expect liberals to push back harder than conservatives on this proposal. Face it; liberals love to spend other people’s money and are unwilling to compromise even when some liberal favorites such as extensive military cuts are included in the proposal. And let’s not forget that 12 of the 18 members on the debt commission are Democrats. So the debt report may be considered bipartisan, but it is really left leaning and unfortunately, that is not enough to get far left liberals on board with the plan. The truth is that it takes conservative ideas to reduce the debt, and even liberals on the commission understand that fact.