Republicans blast fiscal commission

Senate Republicans on Wednesday panned the deal struck by senior congressional Democrats and the White House for a bipartisan fiscal commission.

Under the tentative agreement reached Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama would issue an executive order to create a bipartisan fiscal commission that would produce proposals to address the country’s rising $12.3 trillion debt, lawmakers involved in the talks said. The president’s commission is similar to a proposal pushed by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

{mosads}But Gregg and other GOP members have split with Conrad, who has been involved in discussions over the commission led by Vice President Joe Biden. Gregg dismissed the idea of creating the commission by executive order as a “nothing-burger,” arguing that it wouldn’t be as strong as the Conrad-Gregg plan and that it wouldn’t be as bipartisan as they’d hoped.

“They’re suggesting that they create this vehicle, which is an executive order, which is by definition partisan, and the whole purpose of the commission was to be bipartisan,” Gregg told reporters Wednesday.

Conrad said that it’s unlikely that his and Gregg’s plan has the necessary 60 Senate votes to pass, leaving a commission created by the president as the next best option.

“If we can’t pass a statutory commission, then we’re left with an executive order commission or nothing, and that’s reality,” Conrad said.

Conrad and Gregg’s push for a commission is aimed at getting Congress to confront the country’s mounting debt, now at $12.3 trillion. They said that only a bipartisan commission could produce a package of politically painful measures, such as tax increases, spending cuts and changes in entitlement programs, that they see as necessary to slow the rise in red ink.

Under both the Conrad-Gregg approach and the plan emerging out of the White House negotiations, the commission would include lawmakers from both parties and members of the administration. Gregg and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said that the big difference is that the Conrad-Gregg commission would be created by Congress and would thus ensure that the commission’s product be considered by both chambers, while an executive order would lack the ability to force Congress to vote on the panel’s recommendations.

“The problem is, ‘Are you really going to get the vote on [the panel’s proposals]?” Voinovich said. “And I think that it puts the control of this thing pretty much in the hands of the president.”

Conrad cautioned that the agreement with the White House has yet to be finalized.

Conrad said he would explain the pending deal Wednesday to a group of Senate Democrats who had made their support for a proposed increase in the $12.4 trillion federal debt ceiling contingent on Senate leaders allowing a fiscal commission to move forward. The Obama administration has said that the debt limit must be raised to allow the government to continue borrowing money after mid-February.

The Senate began debate on a $1.9 trillion increase in the debt limit Wednesday. Gregg is likely to get a Senate vote this week on the Conrad-Gregg fiscal commission as an amendment to the debt ceiling bill, but he has acknowledged that he doesn’t have the votes.

The push for a commission appears to have cleared one big hurdle. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had been an opponent of a fiscal panel, supports the pending deal, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a participant in the White House discussions. Pelosi and House committee chairmen had argued that the standing committees, not a special commission of appointed lawmakers and other officials, should produce any legislation involving sweeping fiscal changes.

In exchange for her support of the commission, she required that the Senate pass a statutory pay-as-you-go bill, which would require any increases in mandatory spending be offset by tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere. Conrad and Senate Democrats had opposed the PAYGO measure passed by the House last July because it wouldn’t apply to a number of costly items, including a number of middle-class tax cuts, Medicare doctor payments and the extension of the 2009 estate tax rate.

Conrad said Wednesday that the PAYGO measure that the Senate would consider under the White House agreement would include temporary exemptions for those items and that Congress would have to pay for the items after those exemptions expired.