The new bipartisan congressional committee created to reduce the federal deficit will hold its first meeting Thursday, and if it is to fulfill its mandate, it must come up with enough savings to buy every team in the National Football League.
And then buy the whole league over and over again — 35 times. The mission is to lower the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, enough money to cash out Oprah Winfrey 400 times over.
The super committee’s K Street connections
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) met with Republican members of the debt super committee Wednesday. (Sept. 7)
The dollar figures tossed around in Washington’s debate over spending have grown so large that for many people they no longer have much meaning.
But a little context helps put into perspective just how major a task the group — dubbed the “supercommittee” — will face.
Reaching that almost unimaginably huge sum would be, in fact, mathematically easy — the supercommittee will begin its work armed with various commissions’ recommendations for ways to save that much and more. But it would be politically difficult, requiring tough choices and even guesses about how the committee’s actions might affect the economy. And here’s the paradox: Even if the 12-member panel can agree on how to reach the number, it will have made only a small dent in the rapidly growing federal budget, which is expected to include $44 trillion in spending over the next decade.
The Congressional Budget Office says that during the next 10 years, Washington probably will spend $4.69 trillion more than it collects in taxes — that’s four times the committee’s mandate. So even if the supercommittee is super-successful, the deficit will still be growing when the panel is done.
Appointed by House and Senate leaders as part of the August deal that allowed the nation’s legal borrowing limit to rise, the six Democrats and six Republicans on the committee have until Nov. 23 to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit.
Their goal is to cut $1.5 trillion over the next decade. But if they can’t come up with at least $1.2 trillion in savings — or if Congress does not adopt their recommendations by the end of the year — government spending will automatically be cut by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, split evenly between defense and domestic programs.
The threat of that kind of across-the-board cut, particularly to the nation’s military, is designed to compel agreement on a more strategic approach.
So just how much is $1.2 trillion, exactly?
It’s enough to paper over the District of Columbia with a stack of dollars 70 bills thick.
For the sake of comparison, if the nation keeps funding Medicare at its current levels, it will spend $4.7 trillion on the retiree health program over the next 10 years.
Without changing how it funds the military, it will spend $7.86 trillion on defense.
“On the one hand, it’s a big number — in any sense of the word,” said Ed Lorenzen, senior adviser to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “You’re talking about significant policy shifts when you look at a number like that. But, on the other hand, you have to look at what the debt would be even if you achieve it.”
Campaign 2012 tools
The Post Most: PoliticsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Featured Blogs & Columns
Loading...
Comments