Debt Hawk Alan Simpson on the Work Ahead

The co-chair of Obama’s federal debt commission says the job of Congress’s debt-cutting “super committee” will be seriously painful

Shawn Thew/EPA/Corbis

Alan K. Simpson seems to be missing that little voice that stops most people from saying everything they think. That means he’s forever making his friends as angry with him as his enemies. A Republican who represented Wyoming in the U.S. Senate from 1979-97, he served as co-chair of President Obama’s federal debt commission, urging fellow conservatives to set aside their opposition to all taxes and liberals to abandon the idea that entitlements can’t be touched. As Congress launches a new bipartisan “super committee” charged with finding more than a trillion dollars in savings—a provision in the just-passed debt deal—BBW asked Simpson to size up their unenviable task.

There’s something every American can do to help the six Democrats and six Republicans who’ll be picked to sit on the new debt-cutting committee in Congress: Pray for them. What an onerous time they have ahead. Oh, they’ll go in there like it’s the first day of school—clean notebooks and brand new pencils—thinking they’re going to squeeze out marvelously clever and inventive new ways to keep the economy from going to hell. But there are no clever and inventive ways to pay down deficits and the debt. We know what we have to do. We just aren’t desperate enough yet to do it.

We will be soon. I’m speaking from experience. I was the co-chairman, along with my friend Democrat Erskine Bowles, of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. For 10 months we did just what the soon-to-be-named members of the super committee are about to do. We sat in a room with people of good faith, haggling over a compromise that would bring some order to the absurd way our government spends our money. Both sides went into those first meetings all riled up and armed with their clichés, notions they just knew had to be true because they felt them in their bones. It’s all the rickety stuff we’ve heard again and again over the last few weeks: Some of the Republicans were certain the way to do it was only to cut spending and prevent “job killing” revenue increases. Some of the Democrats knew the answer was defense cuts and higher taxes for the wealthy and corporations. How the super committee is going to argue in its first meetings! We’ll see everyone marking his turf.

It took us about three months to trust each other. Then people started to see how puny their “solutions” looked when stacked up against the facts and the math. Our country owes more than $14 trillion. We borrow $3.01 billion every day. We borrow 39¢ for every buck we spend. Anyone who says with a straight face that we are going to get rid of debt like that and not touch revenue, defense spending, Medicaid, Medicare and address the solvency of Social Security is either goofy or a radio talk show host. When Erskine and I agreed to lead the commission, we told ourselves, “We’re doing this for our grandchildren.” Then we saw how quickly the country’s finances were unraveling and it became, “We’re doing this for our children.” Finally, we had to admit, “Who are we kidding? We’re doing this for ourselves.”

The formula we eventually worked out calls for about $4 trillion in savings through a mixture of tax expenditure reform, entitlement reforms, and cuts to government programs. I’ll toss my elongated frame out on a limb and predict the recommendations the super committee ultimately makes will look very similar. It’s not because we’re some great wizards, but because there are only so many ways to do this. It’s why the Senate’s Gang of Six came up with a plan that mirrored ours in many respects. Same for Speaker John Boehner’s and Barack Obama’s ill-fated “Grand Bargain.”