Editorial: This time, get serious about Simpson-Bowles

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have done it again, but will anyone listen this time? Or are we determined to continue blundering down the road to fiscal ruin?

Bowles, a Democrat and former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, and Simpson, a Republican and a former senator from Wyoming, have come up with another sensible blueprint to reduce the national debt, now at $16.5 trillion. It would reduce deficits by $2.4 trillion over 10 years.

You may remember that in December 2010, the duo, which headed up President Obama’s debt commission, issued their first Simpson-Bowles plan. But neither Obama nor Congress embraced it.

Under the new plan about $600 billion in savings would come from health care, including paying less to Medicare and Medicaid providers and increasing Medicare premiums for top earners. An additional $600 billion would come from scaling back tax exemptions and deductions. Other savings would come from lowering caps on discretionary spending, reducing farm subsidies and federal pensions, reforming higher education spending and slowing the growth of Social Security cost-of- living increases.

The new plan emerged as Congress faces a deadline next Friday to come up with a debt reduction deal or watch $85 billion in spending cuts take effect throughout federal government. The cuts — called a sequester — are a result of a deal Congress made and the president approved to end a 2011 partisan standoff over increasing the debt limit. It was supposed to be too drastic to ever be implemented, but the two parties appear to be more interested in making each other look bad than in compromising for the good of the country.

This bipartisan effort is offered up by two men who appear to be sincerely trying to help restore the country to some semblance of fiscal health. The proposals do make it clear that if America is to start living within its means all segments of society — rich and poor, young and old — will have to make some painful choices.

Congress should quit bickering and turn its attention to doing what its members were elected to do — approve a budget and stem the flow of red ink. The new Simpson-Bowles plan is a good place to start.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.