Columbus Dispatch...
If Congress does nothing, that might be a pretty good start
Monday August 8, 2011 

There are two deadlines that Congress faces in the next year and a half, and both will affect every American. 

The first is Nov. 23. On that day, a bipartisan 12-member congressional panel must unveil a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion during the next decade. If the committee fails to produce an agreement, then a series of automatic spending cuts go into effect in 2013, evenly divided between domestic and national security programs. 

The second deadline is Dec. 31, 2012. On that day, all of the tax cuts Congress approved under former President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 disappear, and every person in the United States who pays income taxes will have a tax increase. 

Those two dates are a temptation to anyone who wants to aggressively reduce the U.S. deficit during the next decade. In essence, the less Congress does, the smaller the deficit. 

“Congress has managed to maneuver itself in a position that if it does absolutely nothing, it will have a very good result for the deficit,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan Washington group that advocates reducing the deficit. 

In other words, to use a variation of the Michael Douglas line in the film Wall Stree t: Gridlock is good. 

Although it is unlikely that Congress will ignore both deadlines, anyone who has witnessed the deeply divisive debate during the past six months cannot rule that out. After all, there actually were elected members of Congress who took the position that a default by the federal government would not be such a bad thing. 

The same schisms that caused such a food fight in Congress during the debt-ceiling debate are likely to divide the new commission, whose members have not yet been named. 

Republicans will refuse to raise taxes on anyone in any place on the planet and Democrats won’t tolerate anything more the most inconsequential changes in Medicare and Medicaid, the two health programs whose rising costs are a major reason for the deficit. 

“They are going to have a really hard time forging the kind of complicated deal it’s going to take to avoid (automatic spending cuts),” one GOP lobbyist said of the committee. “I don’t think there is a single Republican vote for tax increases. So Republicans will not budge one iota on tax increases.” 

Instead, the lobbyist predicted that Democratic committee members will be “desperate to try and force Republicans to increase taxes,” a rerun of their strategy of the past six months. And despite all their huffing and puffing, Democrats could not get Republicans to yield. 

In a normal world, the pressure created by the looming deadlines on taxes and automatic spending cuts could provide lawmakers with a way out, although that would require them to display wisdom, common sense and the ability to compromise. OK, that is asking a lot. 

But the panel could blend $1.5 trillion in budget cuts with a tax-reform package that reduces the number of exemptions or loopholes while lowering overall tax rates. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has been pushing for such an approach. By reforming the tax code now, lawmakers would not have to even deal with extending the Bush-era tax cuts at the end of next year. 

Two bipartisan commissions — one headed by former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, and the other by former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and former White House budget director Alice Rivlin — both outlined tax-reform plans that would simplify the tax code while lowering rates for individuals and companies. 

“There’s a roadmap that’s already been laid out to follow if they want to,” Bixby said. “They could do it by the end of the year. The question is a matter of political will.” 

Read it at the Columbus Dispatch