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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The History of Deficit Commissions 1982-2011

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  July 25th, 2011 at 03:17 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Apparently, the Republicans in Congress need a brief remedial lesson in the history of debt ceilings in this country over the last thirty years.

January 1982 – Commission on Fiscal Accountability of the Nation’s Energy Resources — Debt at $1.14 Trillion

January 1983 – National Commission on Social Security Reform – - Debt at $1.20 Trillion

January 1984 – Executive Committee of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control in the Federal Government aka – Grace Commission — Debt at $1.43 Trillion

July 1993 – National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement – Debt at $4.35 Trillion

September 1993 – From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less (Gore Commission) – Debt at $4.41 Trillion

October 1997 – National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare – Debt at $5.42 Trillion

February 1999 – Commission to Study Capital Budgeting – Debt at $5.62 Trillion

December 2001 – The President’s Commission to Strength Social Security – Debt at $5.94 Trillion

August 2005 – National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission – Debt at $7.92 Trillion

November 2005 – President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform – Debt at $8.09 Trillion

October 2008 – Congressional Oversight Panel (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act) – Debt at $10.57 Trillion

February 2009 – President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board – Debt at $10.87 Trillion

May 2009 – Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission – Debt at $11.32 Trillion

September 2010 -The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) comprehensive report titled The Future is Now: A Balanced Approach to Stabilize the Public Debt and Promote Economic Growth – Debt at $13.56 Trillion

November 2010 – Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform – Getting Back in the Black – Debt at $13.86 Trillion

November 2010 – Bipartisan Policy Center (Domenici / Rivlin) – Restoring America’s Future – Debt at $13.86 Trillion

December 2010 – National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Fiscal Commission) – Debt at $14.02 Trillion

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  • westbrook348

    and thank you for your research, Erick. But your favored solution is Cut, Cap, & Balance, which increases the debt ceiling by trillions & adds well over a trillion in new debt next year alone. So in the end, none of this matters. The crash is coming. No politician in DC is proposing a plan that seriously addresses our budget problems. They’re all too scared to make real cuts & anger voters. Everyone says they support a BBA, but no one actually wants to balance the budget. So whether the Democrats & Obama “get what they want,” or Boehner “gets what he wants,” it doesn’t really matter. In the end, they’ve all screwed this country, Democrats & Republicans alike. The CCB bill doesn’t save us; it’s just one of many paths that take us over the edge. The dollar will be a worthless currency before we make it to a $17 trillion national debt.

  • bigredone

    Those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat history’s mistakes.

    Hold Fast!

  • gpclaw

    Increasing the debt limit one more time isn’t going to destroy the country. Continuously increasing it will. A balanced budget amendment may allow for the debt limit to increase this time, but it will eliminate the possibility of debt ceiling increases once the states ratify the amendment.

    With out a BBA, the debt ceiling is going to go up. It may not happen today, but unless their hands are tied, some future congress will raise the limit.

  • gpclaw

    That congress loves deficit spending, and increasing the federal debt. Without a BBA, we should expect both to continue in the future.

  • JSobieski

    If you truly believed that, you would be borrowing money like crazy right now—-far to busy living it up to write on a blog.

  • westbrook348

    but we have to balance the budget NOW; we can’t wait for the states to ratify it. By the time we get 3/4 of the states to approve a BBA, we will already have defaulted or destroyed the dollar. That’s why I can’t support CCB. It does the long term job of starting the ball rolling on a BBA, but it doesn’t fix our short term problems by cutting the deficit enough. Boehner & GOP leadership are too scared to make enough cuts to balance the budget. Instead of cutting social security, they attack obama for saying he might not pay every cent of social security. Instead of cutting medicare, they attack obama for cutting $500 billion from medicare in obamcare. Instead of cutting discretionary spending back to 2008 levels or even whispering about abolishing cabinet departments, they play budgetary gimmicks. With the current GOP plan of CCB, we’ll see hyperinflation before we see the BBA become #28

  • westbrook348

    and how do you know i’m not heavily in debt right now? i sincerely hope you have more evidence that the dollar is safe than simply the fact that i’m online right now. But i know you don’t, because all evidence points to a worthless U.S. dollar in the next few years.

  • streiff

    we have a federal law that requires the Senate to pass a budget each year. It hasn’t done so for over two years and yet no Federal Marshals have shown up to make arrests. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, also a federal law, required all spending to have identifiable cuts/taxes associated with it. It was ignored.

    Right now we know that private citizens do not have standing to seek enforcement of the Article II requirements for president — not that I’m a birther but just using this as a case in point. We don’t know if Congress can actually make a president stop a military conflict by any means other than cutting off funding or impeachment. We know for a fact that the Supreme Court treats pissing contests between the Legislative and Executive as “political questions.”

    Even if you pass a BBA if one of the house of Congress decides to ignore it and the president decides to ignore it, the BBA can’t work because there is no enforcement process.

    That doesn’t even begin to deal with the shenanigans of CBO “scoring” and how the budget is administered. I can remember when SS funds were added to general revenues in order to cover spending.

  • JSobieski

    I never said the dollar was safe.
    I never said the dollar wasn’t falling in value.

    I simply say this: you have no basis for the assumption that a $17T debt will result in a dollar that is worthless.

    People can say anything they want. Obama can say a $1T stimulus will create jobs. You can say that once the debt hist $17T, the dollar will be worthless.

    Both of you are talking out of your @$$.

    There is enough of a real problem here, we don’t need to magnify it for the sake of drama.

    There is no reason to think that $17T is somehow magic in terms of a debt catastrophe.

    There is no reason to think that the dollar could actually approach the penny in terms of future value.

    There are reasons to be concerned about inflation, but no thoughtful person is going to predict inflation at a rate of 100%, 1000% or higher.

    Words mean things.

  • Adjoran

    and we are too near the end of the road to kick it again.

    But it’s not The End either, provided we enact the proper and required spending cuts. We simply have to trim $4-5 trillion off spending over the ten year budget window, or our bond rating will be cut, interest costs will soar and eat up the budget, and the hole will be ever-deepening. It would be like trying to dig our way out of a hole in sand.

    We have to increase the debt ceiling because just avoiding a technical default doesn’t help, despite what some otherwise intelligent people seem to believe. The ratings agencies will downgrade our paper even if we delay payments to contractors, or have a temporary shutdown (unless mandated by law). There’s no way to play cute with it: your credit rating depends on your paying ALL your bills on time, and so does the country’s.

    BBA isn’t going to happen in this Congress and talking about it is good politics, but a waste of time and energy in addressing the immediate crisis. It would take 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate. We might pass it in the next Congress if we win big enough to put the fear of God into the remaining Democrats.

    The only proposals which cut enough to save our bond rating were the Ryan budget passed by the House, and the Coburn proposal which was stillborn when he was wooed back into the Gang o’ 6. We have to get there, though, even if we have to drag Obama kicking and screaming all the way.

    Not that there is anything wrong with that . . .

  • westbrook348

    I may have been exaggerating: a worthless dollar is only a possibility at this point. Perhaps we’ll have to hit the $20 or $25 trillion debt ceiling (and at this rate, we will, even with the Ryan plan) before i can reasonably say such things like that about our currency. By $17T, all i can say with certainty is that the dollar will be worth significantly less then than it is now. But that in itself is problem enough.

  • westbrook348

    Just one more reason why we’re screwed. Even if we got a BBA ratified years down the road, congress would probably find some way around it. That’s why I have no hope for a real solution to this problem. With current leadership, at least.

  • http://www.ArchitecturalShots.com mdyou

    This should go to all 535 of them.

  • wrightclick

    Hey, if it works for CO2….

  • wrightclick

    https://grassroots.cc/3304_Debt_Limit_Vote_Send_Faxes_7-26-2011?