The Case Against the Budget Commission

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The deficit is a funny political issue. On the one hand, it often riles up politicians, who use it as evidence that the government (and the party in power) is dysfunctional and isn’t responsible with taxpayers’ money. On the other hand, few of these same politicians actually propose doing anything specific to solve the problem. They usually just fall back on the old cliché of “cutting waste,” whatever that means. The problem is apparently important enough to complain about in a very serious voice on the Sunday talk shows, but not important enough to offer specific solutions.
 
Recently, the idea of a budget commission has come into vogue. The basic framework is to create an 18-member commission—10 Democrats and 8 Republicans—picked by the Congressional leadership and the President. The commission would be charged with “reviewing all aspects of the current and long-term financial condition of the federal government” and proposing a deficit-reduction package to Congress, which would then be forced to have an up-or-down vote on the package without amendments. The bill to create the commission currently has 25 co-sponsors, including 11 Democrats and 14 Republicans. President Obama recently announced his support, although it appears he did so reluctantly and in an attempt to smooth passage of the debt limit.
 
So what’s wrong with the idea? As I’ve written before, current deficits are overwhelmingly the result of the economic recession, which depresses tax revenues and makes the social safety net more expensive. Long-term deficits are the result of rising health care costs. In other words, economic stimulus and health care reform must be at the heart of any agenda to get back on a fiscally sustainable path.
 
The commission, on the other hand, is spawn from this vague notion that if only we could get politicians to make tough choices, we’d have the deficit under control. But Congress has the power to make these decisions itself, doesn’t it? Why delegate this power to a commission, which in all likelihood will just tell Congress what it already knows?
 
Or maybe it won’t say anything at all. There is good reason to believe the commission will be completely ineffective, without the ability to even garner the 14 votes necessary to make a recommendation to Congress. Stan Collender points out that independent commissions only succeed when there already exists a political consensus. For example, the BRAC Commission succeeded because Congress agreed that in the wake of the Cold War, military facilities across the country needed to be closed. The BRAC Commission merely chose which bases to close. In other words, Congress first made policy (bases need to be closed), and then the commission implemented that policy. A more appropriate use of the independent commission framework would be if Congress decided that it wanted to cut tax expenditures or agricultural subsidies in half, and then had the Commission figure out how to do that.
 
But there’s no consensus on what the goal is; in fact, there isn’t even a consensus on what the problem is. Is it too much spending, insufficient revenues, entitlements, earmarks, or subsidies for special interests? Budget experts tend to agree that the problems are the recession and health care costs, but politicians have an impressive ability to completely ignore expert advice. Regardless, questions such as “how big should government be,” “what types of taxes should finance government,” and “how high should the deficit be” are the exact questions we elect politicians to answer. We don’t need a commission, we need a Congress that has the spine to do what needs to be done: finish health care reform and pass another jobs bill. The Budget Commission is just a way for Congress to skirt responsibility while pretending it cares about the deficit.
 
If you found this piece on an independent budget commission interesting, take a look at this post on income inequality and its impact on health.
 
(Photo by Pete Souza of key economic staff members confer during a budget session in the White House Roosevelt Room on Friday, Feb. 6, 2009.)