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Editorial: Gang of Six plan breaks D.C. cycle of cynicism

Sun., July 24, 2011

You do not normally find Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo among the Senate’s show horses, but last week he was everywhere – Fox, CNN, Bloomberg – making a case for proposed budget legislation drafted by the Gang of Six.

These three Democrats and three Republicans, Crapo among them, have become the unlikely centrists in a bitterly polarized Washington, D.C. When Illinois liberal Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin and Oklahoma conservative Republican Sen. Tom Coburn can throw in together, something unique is going on.

Unique, but complicated, and what the group has come up with is less legislation than it is working papers, if their compatriots are willing to do the work. The bottom line is a reduction of about $3.6 trillion over 10 years compared with a Congressional Budget Office baseline established in March, or $4.5 trillion compared with the baseline used by President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission, where the Gang and many of its ideas coalesced. To reach those targets, Crapo says, they got “into the weeds” of spending and tax reform.

They achieve an initial $500 billion in savings by capping discretionary spending through 2015, applying a different inflation measure when calculating Social Security benefits, repealing some pieces of the health care reform bill and, minor point, freezing congressional pay.

Responsibility for carving out the rest of the savings and tax reform measures is handed to committees directed to meet specific targets; $80 billion from the Armed Forces Committee, for example, or $65 billion from Homeland Security and Government Affairs. The Finance Committee would have six months to design a tax reform package that flattens tax rates for individuals and corporations, with all-but-sacred deductions like those for home mortgages and charitable contributions subject to adjustment.

Social Security would be reformed to assure solvency over 75 years.

Any changes would require 60- or 67-vote majorities. If any one of what will likely be at least three bills to enact the Gang’s plan fails, none takes effect.

The whole is predicated on some dubious assumptions: that future congresses will exercise discipline, and tax reforms will stimulate the economy to offset initial revenue losses. That logic failed disastrously with the reforms enacted under President George W. Bush, which Congress nevertheless renewed in December. So much for discipline.

But Crapo, Durkin, Coburn and other Gang members Saxby Chambliss, Kent Conrad and Mark Warner, have at least acted without the cynicism that characterizes so much of what Americans have seen and heard at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

As Crapo told one interviewer, “All of the knives are out.” One guess as to who will be doing the bleeding.