Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the former co-chairs of the president’s debt commission, are pushing for a grand deal from the supercommittee that would achieve the $1.2 trillion in required debt reduction and then set a larger goal for additional savings. However, they seem increasingly worried that the supercommittee might fail to reach any agreement and that Congress might scuttle the sequestration mechanism meant to punish such failure.
But is sequestration a remedy worse than the illness? After all, the real driver of the debt isn’t discretionary spending (defense or nondefense), but entitlement spending. Moreover, the national security cuts by the secretary of defense’s own admission would have a devastating impact on defense.
So what should the GOP members do if the Democrats won’t agree to a deal without tax hikes? Make the deal, allow sequestration to go forward, or scrap the whole thing and try to start over?
I’ll post the best analysis tomorrow at noon. Have at it!
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