Congress is in recess this week, but Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles showed up in Washington this morning to harangue them anyway. The leading evangelists for deficit reduction, Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Bowles, the former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton, were attempting to reboot a campaign for greater austerity that has faltered since the fiscal-cliff deal President Obama signed in early January.
The vehicle for this effort is a new plan (actually the outlines of a plan — Bowles told reporters that they’re withholding details until various think tanks have had a chance weighed in). In broad strokes, it would cut the projected deficit by an additional $2.4 trillion over the next ten years, over and above the $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction already passed by Congress and signed by the president in the last two years. The point, Bowles stressed, was not simply to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio but to put it on a downward trajectory.
Despite the $2.5 trillion in cuts and tax increases, Bowles expressed frustration with how Washington has approached the long-term deficit, particularly growing entitlement costs. “The idea of a ‘grand bargain’ is at best on life support,” he admitted.
The difficulty of cutting entitlements programs like Medicare and Medicaid — and the potential risk to politicians — was illustrated during a press conference that Bowles and Simpson held at the Newseum. As the proceedings were getting underway, protesters from the group ThisIsOurDC.org repeatedly interrupted. “We want you to be serious about what Americans need — good jobs and social services!” one protester shouted as she was being dragged out by security. Undeterred, Simpson said it wasn’t too late to achieve reductions of the scope he and Bowles are calling for. “If we were this close in December,” he said, “we want these guys to pick it up and move it along. That’s what we’re here for.”
