Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia is a conservative Republican who has campaigned against tax increases and in favor of deep cuts in federal spending. He also is a reasonable man who understands today’s political scene and believes in balancing the federal budget. He is one of the “Gang of Six” — three Republicans and three Democrats — who have been meeting in private for months to come up with a comprehensive way to tackle the federal deficit.
Sen. Chambliss laid out the situation succinctly for an Association Press reporter: “A Republican plan will not pass. A Democratic plan will not pass. It’s going to require locking arms and jumping off the building together,” he said.
The other members of the sextet are Democrats Mark Warner of Virginia, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Republicans Mike Crapo of Idaho and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
They are working together because all of them believe there is a great hunger in the country for bipartisan cooperation on bringing down the deficit and working on ways to put Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on sound fiscal footing.
They expect to make their plan public within the next few weeks — and the plan is expected to draw from the recommendations made by the president’s deficit commission, which proposed a combination of tax increases and budget cuts with three dollars of budget reduction for every new dollar in taxes. Four of the six were members of that commission.
All six are expecting broad support in the Senate where 64 senators wrote President Obama in March urging him to support a comprehensive deficit reduction effort.
Any such effort with a chance of success must deal with Social Security, Medi-care and Medicaid and in-clude a broad combination of tax increases and the repeal of tax breaks, both for businesses and for individuals. Unless that herd of sacred cows is led up to the altar en masse there is no way that the prospect of year after year of trillion dollar deficits can be dismissed.
And, as the deficit commission recognized, the impact of the necessary fiscal reforms will be felt by all, including those in the upper end of the middle class.
THE POLITICAL HURDLES are high. Republicans must agree to accept higher taxes. Democrats must agree to accept cuts in benefits. Both of these concessions will be easier to accomplish if they are advocated clearly and comprehensively by a bipartisan band of leaders. If their plan is also backed by President Obama after it has been laid out, it will be that much stronger.
The largest obstacle the Gang of Six will find in the path of bipartisanship is partisanship, itself. The 2012 elections are a mere 18 months away. Will Republicans find it possible to moderate their opposition to raising federal revenues just as their television ad writers are cranking up for action? Can Democrats persuade themselves to stop talking about Republican plans to destroy Medicare and agree that it really does take two to tango?
The answer to these questions is a flat no. The year ahead is almost certain to be among the most bitterly partisan of any in our nation’s history. A broad bipartisan ap-proach to the nation’s future isn’t anywhere to be seen on the political horizon.
That said, stark necessity may defeat political opportunism on this critical issue. The debt ceiling must be raised within the next couple of months to prevent economic disaster. Republicans say they won’t vote to lift the borrowing limit without a deficit-reduction plan in place. The Gang of Six will offer a credible, doable, deficit reduction plan. If bipartisan action on that one issue becomes the only alternative to plunging the world into a new, deep recession, that impossible dream may turn real.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
