13th and 14th Plans Added to Super Committee Tracker

Two more recent recommendations have been added to our Super Committee submissions tracker, dealing with defense and health care.

The first comes from a group of 65 House Democrats, who recommend reducing the U.S.'s nuclear weapons budget by $200 billion over ten years. It is not exactly clear how they would reduce spending in this area, but they point out that since the START treaty signed in December would reduce the nuclear arsenal, the nuclear budget should be reduced as well. Also, they mention some arsenal reductions, so it is likely that they would go further in reducing the U.S.'s stock of nuclear weapons. This option is about twice as aggressive as the Sustainable Defense Task Force's cuts to the nuclear arsenal, but it is unclear whether this policy would be a way to help stay within the discretionary caps put in place by the Budget Control Act (BCA) or to be enacted on top of BCA savings.

The second comes from a group of 99 medical organizations (headlined by the American Medical Association) who call for significant medical malpractice reforms. In particular, they call for a limit on noneconomic damages of $250,000 and other liability protections that would make the burden of proof of liability higher. They claim that this form of tort reform would save $62 billion over ten years, making it more aggressive than the reform contained in the Fiscal Commission and similar to the Domenici-Rivlin proposal.

The addition of these two recommendations brings the total in our Super Committee tracker to 14.