WASHINGTON -- Fending off criticism from the right and the left, the co-chairmen of a special debt-reduction panel warned politicians on Friday that inaction on the soaring national debt would be a job-killer on a scale worse than they can imagine.
In a wide-ranging interview with a small group of reporters, Erskine Bowles and his co-chairman, Alan Simpson, said they had tried to spread the pain across all income classes when they offered their draft debt-reduction proposals last week to members of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
That 18-member commission is scheduled to vote by Dec. 1 on proposals to shrink federal budget deficits and tame the skyrocketing national debt, which they say menaces the nation's future prosperity and security.
Some prominent Republicans, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have called their plan a "job-killer," which angers the co-chairmen.
"You know what's a job-killer? Doing what we're doing now," said Bowles, who was the White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and is the president of the multi-campus University of North Carolina system.
Simpson, an acid-tongued retired Republican senator from Wyoming, said the pair's proposals - ranging from raising taxes to slowing the growth of Medicare spending to raising the retirement age for Social Security - were apolitical.
"I just describe it as an honest plan. There's no other way to describe it," he said.
The two discussed the politics of debt reduction. Here's some of what they said, edited into a question-and-answer format.
QUESTION: Will something finally get done?
BOWLES: I think for years and years, politicians have been afraid they'd be punished if they took the tough decisions, if they made choices. And I think the world's changed; I think they're going to be heavily penalized if they don't make these tough choices, if they try to take a walk. And what we try to do is throw a realistic plan out there, and I can tell you the two of us have gotten more "thumbs up" than anything else.
Q: How are you arguing for tough choices?
BOWLES: The things we are asking people to do are not popular. They are tough choices just like any organization goes through. I have over 35 percent fewer employees in administration at the university today than when I walked in there five years ago. None of that was easy. I can tell you none of the people there believed it could be done. We're operating just as effectively now, and obviously a lot more efficient. But we had to do it, because the state has to balance its budget; there was no choice. The only incentive for elected people doing this is it has to be done. Staying "as is" is simply not a choice. I can promise you that if we do nothing, if we stay on automatic pilot, the choice will be made for us. The markets will come, they will be swift, they will be severe, and this country will never be the same.
Q: How do you build consensus on a panel full of politicians?
SIMPSON: It took us three months to establish trust within this commission, because the first blast was, "We wouldn't be here if George W. Bush hadn't done what he did." And then the second blast was, "But this president has done four times more than that." So ... we cooled their juices on both sides on that. We said, "Forget it."
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