It’s a bait-and-switch plan
I commend Reps. Jim Cooper, D-tenn., and Steven Latourette, R-ohio, for offering an alternative budget proposal. Their proposal has virtue, but it violates the critical balance in the recommendations of the presidential fiscal commission headed by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, and claims that they are the same are false.
Simpson-bowles raises $1 trillion more in revenue for deficit reduction than Cooper-latourette – the amount that would be raised if the top tax rates on the wealthiest 2% returned to what they were under President Clinton. That difference represents a full one-quarter of the $4 trillion in total deficit reduction called for in Simpson-bowles. The lower amount of revenue means that, to achieve the same amount of deficit reduction, Cooper-latourette has a much higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue. The Cooper-latourette plan has other differences, such as deep cuts of an additional $300 billion from non-security programs like the FBI, scientific research and food safety. I believe in truth-in-advertising, and claims that Cooper-laTourette mirrors Simpson-bowles are grossly misleading.
We all agree we must reduce the deficit. The question is how. President Obama’s budget and the House Democratic alternative budget reduce the deficit in a balanced and credible way. We make difficult choices while providing investments that help create jobs now and build a stronger economy for the future. Unlike the Republican budget — which ends the Medicare guarantee while providing tax breaks to millionaires — we ask the very wealthy and special interests to share responsibility for reducing the deficit. Indeed, Simpson and Bowles said the president has “embraced many of the goals and principles outlined by the fiscal commission.”
The Simpson-bowles proposal offers an important framework for achieving a bipartisan deficit reduction plan — a balanced approach that Republicans have so far rejected. Unfortunately, the Cooper-latourette plan does not have the balanced mix of cuts and revenue contained in Simpson-bowles.
OPPOSING VIEW
Alternative is no Simpson-bowles