BOSTON (AP) - The heads of President Barack Obama's national
debt commission painted a gloomy picture Sunday as the United
States struggles to get its spending under control.
Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles told a
meeting of the National Governors Association that everything needs
to be considered - including curtailing popular tax breaks, such as
the home mortgage deduction, and instituting a financial trigger
mechanism for gaining Medicare coverage.
The nation's total federal debt next year is expected to exceed
$14 trillion - about $47,000 for every U.S. resident.
"This debt is like a cancer," Bowles said in a sober
presentation nonetheless lightened by humorous asides between him
and Simpson. "It is truly going to destroy the country from
within."
Simpson said the entirety of the nation's current discretionary
spending is consumed by the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
programs.
"The rest of the federal government, including fighting two
wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it,
veterans, the whole rest of the discretionary budget, is being
financed by China and other countries," said Simpson. China alone
currently holds $920 billion in U.S. IOUs.
Bowles said if the U.S. makes no changes it will be spending $2
trillion by 2020 just for interest on the national debt.
"Just think about that: All that money, going somewhere else,
to create jobs and opportunity somewhere else," he said.
Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Bowles,
the former White House chief of staff under Democratic President
Bill Clinton, head an 18-member commission. It's charged with
coming up with a plan by Dec. 1 to reduce the government's annual
deficits to 3 percent of the national economy by 2015.
Bowles led successful 1997 talks with Republicans on a balanced
budget bill that produced government surpluses the last three years
Clinton was in office and the first year of Republican George W.
Bush's presidency. Simpson, as the Senate's GOP whip in 1990,
helped round up votes for a budget bill in which President George
H.W. Bush broke his "read my lips" pledge not to raise taxes.
Despite their backgrounds, both Simpson and Bowles said they
were not 100 percent confident of success this time around.
Simpson labeled the commission members "good people of deep,
deep difference, knowing the possibility of the odds of success are
rather harrowing to say the least."
Bowles also said Congress had to be ready to accept the
commission's findings.
"What we do is not so hard to figure out; it's the political
consequences of doing it that makes it really tough," he said.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe was one of those leaders who sat in
rapt attention during the presentation, one of the first in public
by the commission leaders.
"I don't know that I ever heard a gloomier picture painted that
created more hope for me," said Beebe, commending its frankness.

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