Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson Op-Ed

Today, Erskine Bowles and Sen. Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, published an op-ed in The Hill offering their reactions to the President’s FY2012 budget. Bowles and Simpson write:

"The president is right — if America is to be competitive in this new knowledge-based global economy, we must invest in education, infrastructure and high-value-added research in a fiscally responsible manner.

But House Republicans are also right — spending is out of control, and there is no way possible to address our burgeoning debt without real spending cuts. That means finding ways to make government perform more efficiently, while scaling back or even eliminating certain government functions altogether.

Yet by focusing primarily on domestic discretionary spending, neither plan goes at all far enough to deal with our medium- or long-term fiscal challenges.

With the Fiscal Commission, we spent 10 months closely studying the cold, hard facts. Together, we came to the unavoidable conclusions that the problem is real, the solution will be painful, there is no easy way out and everything must be on the table. We must look to cut spending everywhere we find it. There is no way to put the budget on a sustainable path without addressing the big four — Social Security, healthcare, defense and the tax code."

Read the entire article here.