Politicians love commissions. They love them so much that journalists have come to love cynically deriding them. So now that talk of a “budget commission” to tackle the long-term deficit is in the air, people are being cynical about it. I actually think commissions are a pretty good idea since congress is so bad at designing policy. The real question is what would a serious budget commission look like?
I think Pete Davis and Bruce Bartlett have some pretty good posts on this matter. I would say the most important thing is for congress to not entirely abdicate its policymaking role. The key is to actually tell the commission, in a real way, what it wants studied. Reduce the deficit to such-and-such a percent of GDP relative to baseline and do it this percent with tax cuts and this percent with spending cuts. That’s a real mandate, and exactly the sort of decision elected officials should be making. Similarly, if congress wants the Pentagon to get special treatment, they should say so. With that done, having a commission try to work out the details within the framework of a congressional mandate makes sense.
Previous in TP Yglesias
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.