Blue Dogs Unshroud Debt Reduction Plan

A group of fiscally conservative House Democrats, known as the Blue Dog Coalition, has crafted a comprehensive plan to cut spending and reduce the nation’s deficit.

The group’s “Benchmarks For Fiscal Reform” aims to shred the U.S. deficit — projected by analysts to hit $1.65 trillion this year — by $4 trillion over the next decade through a series of spending cuts and tax reforms.

With Republicans and Democrats currently grappling over whether to cut spending this year by $61 billion or $30 billion, Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the group’s co-chair, said lawmakers must propose reductions much further in scope.

“We are spending all of our time in the House in a debate over 15 percent of the federal budget when the truth is we could eliminate every single non-defense federal program and still run huge annual deficits,”  Ross said in a statement. “Targeted cuts in spending are an important part of the solution, but we are kidding ourselves – and the American people – if we think cutting a few hundred billion dollars is going to eliminate our deficit and solve our long-term debt crisis.”

Though specific details of the plan have yet to emerge, Democrats who crafted it say it will include the “largest deficit cuts in history by 2014,” and will return federal spending to 2008 levels by 2013. Two-thirds of savings generated by the plan would come via spending reductions, while the other one-third would come through tax reform. It would also reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as a means of cutting money spent.

The plan is reminiscent of a proposal put forth in December by President Obama’s fiscal commission. That report, entitled “The Moment of Truth,” also aimed to reduce the debt by $4 trillion through a combination of security and non-security spending cuts, tax reforms and entitlement cuts. The commission’s co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, released a joint statement on Wednesday praising the Blue Dogs’ plan.

“Whatever a final plan may look like, it is our belief that if it follows the principles of reform laid out today by the Blue Dogs, it will be of the scope and magnitude necessary to meaningfully address our nation’s fiscal challenges. No plan is perfect, but any plan that follows the guidelines put forward by the Blue Dogs will significantly improve our nation’s fiscal future, in the near-, medium-, and long-term.”