I might have expected to post this as a "view from the other side" at Angry Bear, but I don't disagree with Calculated Risk in his assessment of former Senator Kerrey's and Senator Rudman's admonition to form a commission on "Securing Future Fiscal Health." CR writes:
Everyone should agree that the most immediate fiscal problem is the structural General Fund deficit. Excluding future health care costs, the structural deficit is around 4% to 4.5% of GDP. This serious problem has been caused almost exclusively by Bush's policies. And imagine if the economy slows next year, as many people expect, adding a cyclical deficit on top of the huge Bush structural deficit.
So isn't it reasonable to suggest that Mr. Bush and the GOP fix the structural deficit first, before addressing other long-term issues? Of course.
CR is correct in his diagnosis of the immediacy and the size of the problems of the General Fund deficit. As I have discussed in earlier posts (here and here, for example), the appropriate target for the General Fund deficit is for it to average to zero over a business cycle. A corollary to that is that the General Fund should be in surplus during the non-recessionary parts of that business cycle. (A slightly weaker target that I would also accept is that the Debt/GDP ratio not trend upward over time.) This Administration seems to have no problem submitting budgets that don't conform to this target. Certainly the Congress doesn't aspire to a higher standard.
So as much as I would like to see the looming financial crises with entitlement programs averted, CR's requirement of the current leadership in the White House and the Capitol is a reasonable one to impose as a precondition for agreeing to a bipartisan effort to address what will be the most immediate budget issues in a decade or two. It is also a good test of whether there is any reason at all to return them to those positions after the November elections this year and in 2008.