No common ground

Sunday, Dec. 5, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

The leaders of the president’s bipartisan deficit-reduction commission last week offered a thoughtful plan that would cut about $4 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade. On Friday, it went before the commission for a vote, where it needed 14 of 18 votes to pass and be forwarded to Congress.

The plan garnered 11 votes, three shy of getting the requisite supermajority. The vote, however, is impressive considering many observers questioned whether it could even garner a simple majority.

The commission’s leaders were pleased with the largely bipartisan effort. Co-Chairman Erskine Bowles said that, if nothing else, “the era of deficit denial in Washington is over.”

The denial may be over, but the question is whether there will be any action.

Had the proposal gotten 14 votes, it would have gone to Congress, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to hold votes on it. President Barack Obama is expected to include parts of the plan in his budget request next year to Congress, but progress may be difficult. Incoming Republican House Speaker John Boehner, whose party takes control of the chamber next month, wouldn’t commit to holding a vote on the plan, and his caucus was lining up against the proposal.

Half of the Democratic members of Congress on the commission voted against the proposal, which wasn’t unexpected. Democrats complained about the depth of the cuts in services. What was notable was how the Republican members of Congress on the commission voted. Republicans would normally be expected to support cutting the deficit, but they were split. The three Republican senators on the panel voted for it, while the three Republican representatives voted against it.

The Senate Republicans didn’t like everything in the plan, but they said on the whole it was worth approving, noting the danger the deficit poses to the country’s well-being. House Republicans wouldn’t compromise. It was their way or no way.

This is something the nation has seen before, and it’s troubling. House Republicans use an ideological litmus test, and if something doesn’t fit their exact specifications, they’ll fight it tooth and nail.

Republican commission member Rep. Paul Ryan, the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee and a leader of the conservative “Young Guns” coalition, said he couldn’t vote for the proposal because it didn’t “address the elephant in the room” — health care.

Actually, the proposal did address health care, just not in a way Ryan wanted. He wants the federal health care law repealed and claimed the commission proposal “fattens” health care spending, even though the commission’s leaders say it would cut costs.

Ryan’s argument twists the facts and deflects attention from the GOP’s complicity: The nation’s deficit was run up by Republicans in Congress and the White House over the past decade. They launched two wars and increased federal spending — on credit — and now they’re trying to lay the blame on the current president.

That’s shameless.

This is a plan that Republicans should embrace. It would cut federal spending, including billions in entitlement programs, end the reviled earmarks and reduce the deficit. A part of the plan is dependent on new revenue, and Republicans raised some objection to taxes, but that money would go to things such as roads and transportation projects, which would help business and stimulate the economy. The plan would save the nation billions — if not trillions — of dollars in interest on the debt. These are all things Republicans should applaud.

Certainly, the plan isn’t perfect, but it was solid and would have aggressively attacked the deficit, as Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma noted. A member of the commission and one of the most conservative members of the Senate, Coburn put it this way, “The only thing worse than being for it is being against it.”

But House Republicans have put their ideology over a sound, bipartisan proposal. If that’s the way Republicans plan to operate the House, the nation will see progress grind to a halt in Congress, and that will only needlessly prolong the nation’s suffering.