Former Sen. Alan Simpson told a Landon Lecture audience Wednesday that they should challenge any politician who tells them the deficit can be reduced without touching the Big Four: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and the Defense Department.
“The American people,” he said, “are smarter than the members of Congress are. They are disgusted. They are tired of BS and mush and that is all they are getting from all sides.”
Simpson, a Republican, was co-chair with Democrat Erskine Bowles of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also known as the Deficit Commission. The commission issued a 67-page report spelling out in detail the kinds of revenue increases and spending cuts that can and should be made to bring the federal budget back toward balance.
In typical Simpson fashion, he said his commission had “a simple mission and succeeded beautifully because we have effectively pissed off everyone in the United States.”
He targeted the AARP as “nothing more than a marketing organization” and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist advocates no tax increases of any kind — and considers the elimination of tax breaks for special interest groups to be tax increases. His tactic is to get politicians to sign pledges to oppose all revenue increases, which Simpson calls stupid policy.
Why would anyone agree in advance to oppose a measure without reading it, without listening to the debate, without determining the facts, he asks in exasperation.
Simpson warned the audience, “ … if our country and our Congress are in thrall to Grover Norquist and the AARP, ladies and gentlemen, we don’t have a prayer.”
Continuing, the former senator said in an interview he had with Norquist that he was told that Ronald Reagan was Norquist’s favorite president. When Simpson reminded the lobbyist that Reagan had raised taxes 11 times in this two terms, Norquist said, “Yes. I opposed that. I wondered why he did it.” Simpson told him, “he did it to make the country run.” Opposing all tax increases,” Simpson said, “is a sick, sick idea.”
He went on to say that the country is now operating on the lowest amount of revenue since the Korean War. Taxes now amount to only 15 percent of the Gross National Product in comparison to 18 to 19 percent as an average in this era, he said.
He said that there is now about $1 trillion in the budget in earmarks and “tax expenditures” — tax deductions and rebates — which benefit only 5 percent of the American public. Eliminating those would create additional cash to run the government and would reduce the need for tax increases.
SIMPSON ALSO called for a new mindset in the country. It is nearly impossible to solve problems in Washington when Republicans and Democrats not only can’t work together but seem to hate each other.
It took the Deficit Committee nearly three months just to establish trust among the members, he said.
He said he found it encouraging that four of the 12 members of the new deficit reduction committee established by Congress and the administration served on his committee and could accept the idea of bipartisan action.
“If all you see is a guy with a D or an R behind his name and are immediately disgusted or hate him, that’s stupefying,” he said.
He also called for increased attention to health care reform. The present law isn’t getting the job done, he said. Health care costs must be reduced still further.
He also called for Social Security reform by raising the amount of income subject to the payroll tax to $190,000 a year, using a better system for compensating for inflation, increasing the retirement age and indexing pensions to incomes. He also advocates malpractice reform, increased prescription drug discounts and reductions in government-subsidized medical education.
The 79-year-old who served three terms in the Senate from Wyoming closed his frank comments with a plea for his audience to remember what America stands for in the world. “We must be a pretty good country, or why else would everybody in the world be trying to get here?”
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
