Hope and Fail

Deficit commission just ‘one of those Washington gimmicks’

Like his proposal in the State of the Union to put a “freeze” on government spending, President Obama’s “bipartisan fiscal commission” is just a gimmick.

Here’s what the president promised, while acknowledging that the Senate just killed the proposal:

Now, even after paying for what we spent on my watch, we’ll still face the massive deficit we had when I took office. More importantly, the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will continue to skyrocket. That’s why I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. (Applause.) This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline.

Now, yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I’ll issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.

That sounds good. But the president’s executive order (like the one to close Gitmo within a year) will have no teeth. According to the Associated Press:

Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

Sounds like “one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem.”

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