April 25, 2011

Washington, D.C. - On his Washington Post blog today, Ezra Klein called the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force plan “the most thoughtful, detailed and credible deficit reduction plan on the table.” The BPC’s Debt Reduction Task Force was led by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin. The bipartisan task force included 19 former White House and Cabinet officials, former Senate and House members, former governors and mayors, and business and labor leaders, and released its bold, comprehensive plan, Restoring America’s Future, to address the nation’s debt crisis last November.

“Reading the commission’s report is unlike reading any of the other proposals: The policies are described at length, with possible counter-arguments explained and considered,” said Klein in his blog post. “For instance, in the section explaining the commission’s value-added tax, it admits that ‘the main objections raised to a national sales tax of this type are that it is regressive; it interferes with a revenue source that has historically been used exclusively by the states; and it would be a hidden tax that would facilitate excessive growth in government spending. However, these problems are either overstated or surmountable.’ It then goes on to give a reasonable account of why some of those problems are overstated or why or how the BPC’s proposal addresses them.”

While Klein doesn’t agree with all of BPC’s proposals, he says the plan is “playing at a different level than the other contenders.”

Read the full blog post here.

Last week, the BPC’s Debt Reduction Task Force released its new Save-as-you-Go (SAVEGO) proposal, a new budget enforcement process to address the nation’s debt crisis. To read more about SAVEGO, click here.

Economic Policy Project