Former senators press presidential candidates on coming budget 'train wreck'

Former senators Judd Gregg, left, and Evan Bayh hope to
 pressure presidential candidates on budget issues.
 Photo/Elizabeth Frantz, Concord Monitor

Former senators Judd Gregg and Evan Bayh have begun their quest to make the federal debt a top priority for all presidential candidates, forcing them to acknowledge that “we’re headed for a train wreck.”
Last week the former Senate colleagues – Gregg ,a New Hampshire Republican, and Bayh, an Indiana Democrat – took their message to New Hampshire, home of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
They urged their audience at the University of New Hampshire law school’s Rudman Center to use their influence as voters in the all-important Granite State to press 2016 presidential hopefuls on fiscal issues such as tax reform and reining in entitlement programs.

The coveted New Hampshire voters “are the most important people in America” because of their ability to question candidates practicing retail politics, said Bayh, who also served as governor of Indiana.

“We are asking them (the candidates) to acknowledge (the debt) as one of their top domestic -- if not their top domestic -- priority,” Gregg said, according to the Concord Monitor.

Gregg and Bayh are leading the charge on behalf of two nonpartisan organizations, the campaign to Fix the Debt and The Concord Coalition. They will also visit Iowa, the other state that leads off the 2016 nominating contests.

The former senators warn that the federal debt is now the highest it has been in U.S. history, other than during World War II. Short-term deficits have come down as Washington enacted more than $4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years to help stabilize the situation.

But they caution that the short-term improvement is mostly due to the economic recovery, and the enacted savings were largely in the parts of the budget that do not pose the greatest threat to fiscal stability.
Candidates for the Oval Office tend to talk about the issue in generalities, but they fail to acknowledge the nitty gritty of fixing the problem.

In a recent op-ed in Roll Call, the two former senators said candidates should have a detailed plan to address the nation’s bleak long-term fiscal outlook.

“…The debt is continuing to increase and will likely exceed the size of the economy in the mid-2030s,” they wrote. “Simply bringing debt levels down to 70 percent of gross domestic product within 10 years would require $2.2 trillion of additional deficit reduction, and would still leave debt at twice its pre-recession average.
“Meanwhile, the growth of health, retirement and interest spending is crowding out important investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development.

“… Yet, politicians and voters alike should understand sacrifices will be necessary in the years ahead as an aging population, rising health care costs and a deeply flawed tax system put more and more pressure on the federal budget.”