The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion McCarthy’s debt plan needs an endgame. Here’s what it could look like.

President Biden walks with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Capitol Hill on March 17. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s budget and debt-limit plan is full of good policies, but it is more of an opening offer for budget negotiations than something likely to become law. That means he and House Republicans still need a strategy that could yield a deal with a meaningful impact on government spending.

Here’s one option: Create a bipartisan budget commission that would develop a serious comprehensive plan — which Congress would be compelled to vote on.

McCarthy’s proposal is fine from a conservative perspective. It would significantly reduce domestic discretionary spending and limit its future growth. It includes no tax hikes and does not touch any of the major entitlement programs. If Republicans controlled the Senate and held the White House, it’s possible it might pass.

They don’t, of course, and that’s why McCarthy needs an endgame. He needs Democrats to agree, and they are not going to sign off on undoing much of what they passed in the last Congress. The question is, what can they agree on, and that leaves McCarthy with few appealing options.

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He has only two possibilities that could achieve immediate spending cuts: The first is that they would be painfully small, which would infuriate conservatives who are tired of endless spending hikes. The second is that they would be more substantial but would also include some of Biden’s tax hikes or impose some limits on defense spending increases. Neither would satisfy conservatives or defense hawks in either parties.

That’s why a commission could be the best outcome. Such a body with serious appointees and instructions to produce a comprehensive, long-term budget fix could yield much more progress than any one-year deal could possibly achieve.

Commissions are usually cop-outs that allow policymakers to avoid hard decisions. But there are examples of bipartisan panels producing the sort of outcomes that short-term politics makes almost impossible to achieve. The Greenspan Commission of the early 1980s produced a bipartisan deal to shore up Social Security’s finances. And the Base Realignment and Closure Commission has successfully reduced the number of active U.S. military bases, which had been rendered superfluous.

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A budget deficit reduction committee would need a few features to make it work. First, it would have to be able to look at all aspects of the budget, including defense and taxes. That doesn’t mean that a final plan would increase taxes or limit defense spending, but progressives would only consider participating in such an effort if these items were on the table.

It would also need provisions that force votes on proposals and fast-track consideration of any plan that garners significant backing from both parties. These provisions would accomplish two things: Politicians would not be able to avoid accountability on ideas to cut the deficit, and proposals with widespread support could not be easily waylaid by procedural shenanigans.

At a minimum, any proposal that garnered support from 20 percent of commission members should get a floor vote in the House. Many of these will be signaling bills that have no chance of passing, but members would be forced to declare on the record where they stand on ideas that each party’s base likes. Some of those views might be extreme, but what’s considered extreme now could become more mainstream once it receives a public hearing.

Proposals with at least majority support from the commission should also receive special treatment. These ideas should be submitted to the House for a floor vote without the possibility of amendments. If passed, they should go immediately to the Senate floor with a similar ban on amendments. They should also be immune from a filibuster and receive whatever procedural protections that would prevent a small group of senators from derailing the effort.

These rules avoid some of the weaknesses of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles Commission, the last serious attempt to tackle the deficit. That commission was hampered by a requirement that only proposals that garnered supermajority support would obtain automatic votes. That allowed each party’s extremes to prevent the commission’s reasonable plan from going to the floor.

The deal creating this new commission could also include another feature to make it politically palatable: Allow the commission to wait until January 2025, to wrap up its work. That would allow both parties to use the 2024 campaign to push their preferred budget plans. If one party decisively wins that argument, the commission could then take that into account. And fear that one party might take control of the entire process after the election could force the other party to compromise.

McCarthy’s proposal is a good start to push forward the long-overdue conversation on our spending and deficit problems. If he can get Democrats to agree to sponsor a more comprehensive, long-term approach, that start could lead to an unexpectedly positive finish.

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