Savings Panel Pitches Ideas To Super Committee

By Lisa Kellman

A bipartisan panel of experts met Tuesday to do the job the congressional committee on deficit reduction can’t seem to manage.

The panel proposed its own spending cuts and revenue generators that they believe would be the most effective way to reduce the nation’s deficit, and the most likely to pass in Congress by Thanksgiving.

The panel suggested cutting federal healthcare programs, wasteful subsidiesand defense.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — also known as the super committee — has until November 23 to send Congress a plan to slash the deficit by $1.2 trillion over ten years or an automatic sequestration will trigger, resulting in across the board spending cuts to domestic and defense budgets.

According to David Kendall from Third Way, a centrist think tank, sequestration would result in 12,000 criminals not going to jail, 50,000 new cases of food poisoning, 225,000 pounds of unscreened luggage and half as accurate weather reports because America won’t be able to afford new satellites.

Phil Kerpen from Americans for Prosperity, a conservative nonprofit that has been advocating against tax increases, called for repealing President Obama’s healthcare law, block-granting all federal entitlements and cutting federal agriculture subsidies, which he said would save taxpayers $1.651 trillion.

Gary Kalman from the Public Interest Research Group agreed that industries should have their subsidies cut.

“Some of the dairy management funding…pays pizza chains to market extra cheesy pizza,” Kalman said, citing the wasteful ways in which profitable industries spend taxpayer money.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.) joined the panel midway and pushed for revenue neutral tax reform, while Michael Linden from the left-leaning Center for American Progress argued that Americans pay a low tax rate as is and the budget issue could be solved by raising tax rates.

The panel was clearly divided, but they called on members of the super committee to consider their recommendations by visiting EndingSpending.com.