President's Debt Commission Proposes Spending Cuts, Social Security Reform

The heads of a panel created by President Obama this year to study ways to eliminate the nation’s burgeoning debt released a detailed report today centered on spending cuts and entitlement reform.

The first sentence of the 50-page report issued by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson reads “America cannot be great if we go broke.” Thus follows a bevy of proposals aimed at reducing America’s debt by $4 trillion over the next decade.

Key recommendations from Erskine and Bowles include enacting $200 billion worth of defense and discretionary spending cuts by the year 2015, reforming the nation’s tax code to simultaneously reduce rates and increase the number of payers, addressing annual reimbursement rates for doctors who accept Medicare and Medicaid, and tweaking America’s Social Security program to ensure that it remains solvent for the next 75 years.

On the issue of Social Security, the co-chairmen propose gradually raising the minimum age of qualification until it reaches 68 by 2050, and altering the system on which cost-of-living-adjustments are based.

On defense, the report suggests reducing budgets and making other cuts to the tune of $100 billion over the next five years.

Retiring Republican Senator Judd Gregg (N.H.) called the report a “significant step down the path of establishing fiscal responsibility.”

Erskine and Bowles must now find a way to get 14 of the other 16 members on the commission to support their plan. With the panel evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, finding the votes could prove to be difficult.

The full commission must report by December 1.