Nearly 100 “persons of interest” will join President Barack Obama at the White House Monday for what is being billed as a “fiscal responsibility summit.” The bi-partisan get together includes 30 members of the Senate, 30 members of the House of Representatives and another 30 or 40 fiscal geeks and scholars from universities, think tanks and advocacy organizations like the AARP.
As good at their jobs as these men and women may be, even they, we are told, won't quite put the country's finances in order during this three-hour afternoon pow-wow with the chief exec.
The point of the meeting, as reported by Jackie Calmes of the New York Times, is to “underscore how big the problems are” and to air potential solutions. Administration officials have put out the word that the summit will not be the occasion to announce a task force on keeping Social Security solvent for the long-term, as they had considered, though such a panel may be formed eventually, according to Calmes.
Meanwhile, getting a leg up on the summit, 14 federal budget gurus (all of whom will be at the summit) from an array of Washington think tanks, issued a statement today urging the president to appoint “an independent and truly bipartisan commission … capable of bringing about decisive action that has broad public support.” The group has also suggested “vital criteria for … breaking through the legislative logjam.”
These four criteria for the suggested commission are:
- It must be truly bipartisan and command wide support.
- It must have a broad mandate to address all aspects of the fiscal problem.
- There must be no preconditions to deliberations.
- Recommendations must go before Congress for an up-or-down vote with few if any amendments.
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