If you want to engage in a good mental exercise while watching puffy clouds roll by on an early spring day, try imagining how things would be different today if President Trump could appoint Alan Simpson to set the federal budget straight instead of Elon Musk.
You won’t have to use too much imagination. Simpson, who died Friday at age 93, led a commission that was given that task, along with Democrat Erskine Bowles, who had been chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
It was 2010, and newly formed “tea party” groups were springing up from coast to coast, putting pressure on President Obama to get control of government spending.
You won’t have to use too much imagination. Simpson, who died Friday at age 93, led a commission that was given that task, along with Democrat Erskine Bowles, who had been chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
It was 2010, and newly formed “tea party” groups were springing up from coast to coast, putting pressure on President Obama to get control of government spending.
The backdrop to this included bailouts at the start of the great recession, and what I quaintly referred to at the time as “profligate spending.”
Simpson was a tough-as-nails Wyoming senator who often expressed things exactly as he saw them. But he knew when to apply a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. He wasn’t into gimmicks like random layoffs or drop-kicking foreign aid that adds up to less than 1% of the federal budget.
What he knew was that fixing the nation’s gathering economic crisis would require compromises and cuts that left both political parties in need of some stitches. And he also understood the inconvenient truth neither political extreme is willing to accept: The nation can’t truly get its fiscal house in order without tax hikes and budget cuts.
Simpson’s candor could rattle bureaucrats, such as when he told the Investment Company Institute that Social Security is not a retirement plan. “It was set up … to take care of people who were in distress — ditch diggers, wage earners — it was to give them 43% of the replacement rate of their wages,” he said.
And yet, he and Bowles would have saved Social Security, diverting it from its current course, which is for its main trust fund to no longer be able to pay full benefits about a decade from now.
Their plan would have raised the retirement age to 69, reducing benefits to the nation’s youngest workers only. Wealthier retirees no longer would have gotten the same benefits as those who need money the most.
Today, neither party wants to talk about changes to Social Security, which is the same as saying they, or future politicians, will have to deal with the crisis when it hits.
Simpson-Bowles would have cut defense spending and farm subsidies. The federal gas tax would have gone up by 15 cents a gallon, and mortgage deductions would have disappeared from the tax code. They would have broadened the tax base, allowing the highest marginal income tax rate to drop to 28%. Today it sits at 37%.
They wanted to cap government spending at 21% of GDP, and force all government agencies to cut discretionary spending to 2008 levels, after accounting for inflation. Today’s spending is at 36.28% of GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund.
For every dollar raised through new taxes, $2 to $3 would have been cut.
The Independent Center’s President, Lura Forcum, said in a statement last week, “Regardless of whether one agrees with its recommendations, the bipartisan Simpson–Bowles Commission was the last meaningful attempt to set our nation on a sustainable course. The commission unified independents, Republicans, Democrats, and private citizens in seeking practical solutions to America’s debt crisis.”
It also never stood a chance.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as “Simply unacceptable.” Republicans scoffed at the idea of any tax increase. President Obama, who had created the commission and assigned Simpson and Bowles to it, simply set its recommendations aside.
The commission itself wasn’t unanimous in support of the recommendations.
At the time, the Deseret News called it “a plan that doesn't attempt to spare Americans from the awful truth.”
But it was, at least, a workable plan. “We don't doubt that someone could draft a better one,” the Deseret News said. “But we're certain that any realistic one would have to require painful sacrifices.”
At the time, the national debt was roughly $12 trillion. Today it has passed $36 trillion, with no end in sight.
It may be easy to see how some might find Musk’s machete approach to government cuts satisfactory in the face of such political failures.
However, Simpson and Bowles had it right. Not only did they show that the nation needs an intelligent, thoughtful approach to its fiscal problems, they provided one honest way in which it could be done.
Forcum asks, “The question is, will anyone in Congress today step up like Alan Simpson did?”
More to the point, would such a person, if he or she exists, meet with the same swift result?
Simpson was a tough-as-nails Wyoming senator who often expressed things exactly as he saw them. But he knew when to apply a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. He wasn’t into gimmicks like random layoffs or drop-kicking foreign aid that adds up to less than 1% of the federal budget.
What he knew was that fixing the nation’s gathering economic crisis would require compromises and cuts that left both political parties in need of some stitches. And he also understood the inconvenient truth neither political extreme is willing to accept: The nation can’t truly get its fiscal house in order without tax hikes and budget cuts.
Simpson’s candor could rattle bureaucrats, such as when he told the Investment Company Institute that Social Security is not a retirement plan. “It was set up … to take care of people who were in distress — ditch diggers, wage earners — it was to give them 43% of the replacement rate of their wages,” he said.
And yet, he and Bowles would have saved Social Security, diverting it from its current course, which is for its main trust fund to no longer be able to pay full benefits about a decade from now.
Their plan would have raised the retirement age to 69, reducing benefits to the nation’s youngest workers only. Wealthier retirees no longer would have gotten the same benefits as those who need money the most.
Today, neither party wants to talk about changes to Social Security, which is the same as saying they, or future politicians, will have to deal with the crisis when it hits.
Simpson-Bowles would have cut defense spending and farm subsidies. The federal gas tax would have gone up by 15 cents a gallon, and mortgage deductions would have disappeared from the tax code. They would have broadened the tax base, allowing the highest marginal income tax rate to drop to 28%. Today it sits at 37%.
They wanted to cap government spending at 21% of GDP, and force all government agencies to cut discretionary spending to 2008 levels, after accounting for inflation. Today’s spending is at 36.28% of GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund.
For every dollar raised through new taxes, $2 to $3 would have been cut.
The Independent Center’s President, Lura Forcum, said in a statement last week, “Regardless of whether one agrees with its recommendations, the bipartisan Simpson–Bowles Commission was the last meaningful attempt to set our nation on a sustainable course. The commission unified independents, Republicans, Democrats, and private citizens in seeking practical solutions to America’s debt crisis.”
It also never stood a chance.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as “Simply unacceptable.” Republicans scoffed at the idea of any tax increase. President Obama, who had created the commission and assigned Simpson and Bowles to it, simply set its recommendations aside.
The commission itself wasn’t unanimous in support of the recommendations.
At the time, the Deseret News called it “a plan that doesn't attempt to spare Americans from the awful truth.”
But it was, at least, a workable plan. “We don't doubt that someone could draft a better one,” the Deseret News said. “But we're certain that any realistic one would have to require painful sacrifices.”
At the time, the national debt was roughly $12 trillion. Today it has passed $36 trillion, with no end in sight.
It may be easy to see how some might find Musk’s machete approach to government cuts satisfactory in the face of such political failures.
However, Simpson and Bowles had it right. Not only did they show that the nation needs an intelligent, thoughtful approach to its fiscal problems, they provided one honest way in which it could be done.
Forcum asks, “The question is, will anyone in Congress today step up like Alan Simpson did?”
More to the point, would such a person, if he or she exists, meet with the same swift result?
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