Unable themselves to put government on a diet, Congress and Obama could go Jenny Craig route

Congress could try Jenny Craig route on debt

WASHINGTON — If Congress can’t stop itself from spending the nation into everlasting debt, give the controls to somebody else.

Who says?

A sizeable number of senators themselves.

An unpopular but must-pass vote next month to let the government borrow almost $1 trillion has nine Senate Democrats saying enough is enough. Since Congress and the president lack the will to tighten their belts, maybe a commission can put them on a diet.

The thinking is that it’ll take such a task force — whose members would be drawn from Congress and the administration — to force people to roll up their sleeves, stop their political jabs, and come up with a bipartisan plan to try to keep the country from drowning in debt.

“Everything would be on the table. Social Security is on the table. Medicare is on the table. Revenues are on the table,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., came up with the plan. “The key to it is that it has to be … absolutely fair and bipartisan.”

Conrad and Gregg are, respectively, the chairman and senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, one of the most partisan panels in all of Congress.

That they’re willing to hold hands and leap when even the most timid attempts to cut spending or raise revenues start street fights on Capitol Hill says something about the degree of the problem.

“When you’re dealing with something of this dimension it requires a special process,” Conrad says. “This is daunting and it’s going to take both sides coming together.”

The 16-member commission’s task would be to come up with a bipartisan plan to be submitted to Congress for a mandatory up-or-down vote. It would have eight Democrats and eight Republicans, but it would require 12 votes to agree upon a plan. It would also take 60 percent margins to pass the House and Senate.

Conrad points to the successful 1982 effort to shore up Social Security as the model for bipartisanship. The process is borrowed from the way politically hazardous decisions are made on which military bases to close: Congress votes up or down on the recommendations of a base closing commission.

As for all the promises that new “pay-as-you-go” budget rules would require lawmakers to make sure new spending and tax cuts wouldn’t swell the deficit, the reality has proven quite different.

In October alone, for example, President Barrack Obama suggested borrowing $13 billion to give Social Security recipients a $250 election-year bonus. Senate Democratic leaders proposed borrowing $250 billion to pay doctors who treat Medicare patients. Another group of senators called for extending and expanding an $8,000 tax credit for homebuyers for seven months with another $17 billion in IOUs.

The last bipartisan deficit reduction deal, a 1997 agreement backed by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and then President Bill Clinton, was greased by tax cuts for Republicans and targeted spending increases for Democrats. Any upcoming effort promises to be far more painful.

“When I first started in Washington, Conrad talked to me about this idea and I thought, ‘Oh, what a Washington solution,’” said first-term Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. “Now, after being here, I think it sounds pretty good.”

The commission idea is suddenly popular with moderate Democrats and Conrad claims support from many Republicans as well.

But it’s still a long shot. House and Senate Democratic leaders — especially powerful House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. — oppose it. The Obama administration has sounded open to the idea, but also has promised to start tackling the deficit during next year’s budget debate.

Democratic divisions over the idea of a deficit commission could come to a head with the upcoming vote to raise the federal debt ceiling to $13 trillion.

“We do not believe that action on these important issues will occur” under the present system, nine Senate Democrats and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, wrote in a recent letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “…As part of the debate to increase the debt limit, Congress needs to put in place a special process that allows Congress and the administration to face up to our nation’s long-term fiscal imbalances.”

Congress has never balked at letting the government borrow more money when necessary. But it’s hardly an appealing vote for Democrats already under attack on health care reform and record spending and deficits.

“This is one of those rare moments when the forces of reform actually have some leverage to change things,” said Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who organized the letter to Reid. “Simply raising the debt ceiling without insisting on reform only enables bad behavior.”

(This version CORRECTS Corrects Sen. Bayh’s first name to Evan. Moving on general news and financial services.)