Gregg Participates in White House Summit on Fiscal Responsibility
FISCAL
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 23, 2009
WASHINGTON – Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., was one of more than 120 members of Congress and economic experts attending a White House summit on fiscal responsibility Tuesday, where President Barack Obama announced plans to cut the federal deficit in half and reform entitlement programs days before he is set to unveil his proposed budget for the year.
“The president started out by saying we can’t kick the can down the road any longer, we’ve got to take action. And hopefully [the summit] will lead to action, that’s my hope,” Gregg said in a conference call with reporters after the summit.
Gregg, who earlier this month accepted Obama’s nomination to be secretary of commerce before removing himself from consideration just 9 days later, is the senior Republican on the Budget Committee. At the White House meeting he participated in a session discussing the budget process.
“It was a good discussion but no conclusions were reached,” he said.
Most of the debate, Gregg said, centered on the Conrad-Gregg bill, a proposal by Gregg and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Budget Committee. The proposal would have a bi-partisan task force of Democratic and Republican senators and members of the administration hash out policy and then send it to the floor of both Houses for yes or no vote, with no amendments or debate.
“Right now it’s the most viable proposal out there,” Gregg said, but cautioned that there was strong resistance from House members. “It’s not going to pass and it’s not going to make any progress until the president decides that that’s the direction he wants to go in, and until the House leadership also determines that’s the direction they want to go in.”
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, disagreed the proposal.
“A commission response will thrill policy wonks and not get a damned thing accomplished,” Obey said. “Count me among the strong skeptics.”
Conrad proposed a hybrid system with smaller commissions taking up health care, taxation and Social Security for a year and then merging their proposals.
At the start of the meeting Tuesday afternoon Gregg walked into the East Room of the White House with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who was one of only three Republicans to vote for the president’s economic stimulus package earlier this month. Before the remarks began, Gregg chatted with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who were sitting directly behind him.
During his opening remarks, Obama pledged to go through his budget line by line to remove unnecessary spending, and to propose a budget that will look ahead 10 years, calling past budgets “an exercise in deception” that hid future costs by including spending only for the current year. He also pledged to cut the country’s $1.3 trillion deficit in half by the end of his first term in office and to re-instate the “pay-as-you-go rule,” which requires all spending to be accompanied by cuts someplace else in the budget.
“We cannot, and will not, sustain deficits like these without end,” Obama said. “Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration, or the next generation.”
But Gregg said halving such a large deficit is “not a heavy lift.”
“You’re talking about reducing the deficit to $600 or $500 billion, well, that’s twice what the deficit was prior to the economic slowdown,” he said. “It’ll almost automatically halve itself simply with wind-down of the war and an economic recovery that gets revenue back up around 18 percent. It’ll more than halve itself.”
Other speakers during the opening remarks cited the three main problems facing the long-term budget, focusing largely on the increasing cost of health care, which drives up the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, and on Social Security.
Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, called the rising cost of health care in the private and public sector the “single largest issue” affecting the deficit. The center analyzes how fiscal policy and public programs affect low- and moderate-income persons.
Gregg said the focus on health care makes it unlikely the Conrad-Gregg approach will be used right away.
“The forces at work here on health care are pretty intense, and that’s why I think the Conrad-Gregg approach, at least relative to Medicare, makes sense,” Gregg said during the conference call.
Gregg also released a statement calling for Social Security to be the first entitlement issue addressed.
“Fixing Social Security is a shared, bipartisan goal, and it can be accomplished right away,” Gregg said. “I believe this is the right place to start.”
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