Alexander expects budget deal in 2013
Despite the current partisan gridlock in Congress, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Thursday he expects Congress will reach some type of a budget compromise following the presidential election in November.
“We don’t have a choice,” Alexander told the Chattanooga Rotary Club. “Either in the lame duck session (after the November elections and before the next Congress takes office in January) or in the first three months of the new presidential term, we have to deal with our fiscal situation.”
Alexander said it is most likely the needed compromise will come in early 2013 and involve both tax and entitlement reforms to cut spending and raise more money to narrow a federal budget deficit projected to reach $ 1.1 trillion this year.
In the U.S. Senate where 60 votes are required to pass most measures, Republicans and Democrats will have to
Either in the lame duck session [ late 2012] or in the first three months of the new presidential term, we will have to deal with our fiscal situation.
compromise because neither party will have a sufficient majority before or after this fall’s election, Alexander said.
“If we don’t do it, by the year 2025 every tax dollar we collect will go for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid and there will be no money for national defense, the national parks, national labs or student loans,” he said. “That’s an intolerable situation, and that’s only 10 or 11 years away.”
Alexander made his comments after recalling his own experience becoming Tennessee governer three days early in 1979 at the urging of Democratic prosecutors,
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-tenn.
judges and lawmakers. Former Gov. Ray Blanton was accused at the time of selling pardons and federal prosecutors urged Alexander to take office as governor earlier than planned.
Then-Democratic House Speaker Ned Ray McWherter, who later became Tennessee governor, said he supported Alexander taking office early. “I’m a Tennessean first,” he said when asked why a Democrat was supporting a Republican replacing a Democrat as governor.
Alexander said such bipartisan action during a time of crisis should be a model for politicians putting country ahead of partisan gain.
During his term as governor, Alexander and a Democratically controlled Legislature helped improve the state’s roads and education by raising gasoline and sales tax rates to fund the improvements.
Alexander, who stepped down as Senate Republican Caucus Chairman earlier this year, is among lawmakers who have voiced support for the recommendations of the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (often called Bowles- Simpson commission after co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles). That panel recommended spending cuts, fewer tax deductions and a flatter tax rate.
“We’ve got to raise the debt ceiling, reduce the debt, reform the tax system, deal with Medicare and a whole host of other things,” Alexander said. “We just need to do our jobs that we were elected to do and put the country first.”