House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is a political fresh face to most people though he's now in the highest leadership role in his chamber of Congress. Upon winning the job on Oct. 25 to replace the ousted House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Johnson has been touting plans for a bipartisan debt commission as the nation's deficits and national debt grow increasingly dire.
Speaking to the House that day, Johnson drew attention to the country’s precarious financial situation. He offered a potential solution, albeit a vague and somewhat aspirational one for the time being.
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“The consequences if we don't act now are unbearable. We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well," said Johnson, who as House speaker is second in line of presidential succession behind Vice President Kamala Harris. “We are going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately,” Johnson added.
Johnson, representing the northwestern Louisiana 4th Congressional District and first elected to the House in 2016, issued his fiscal warning amid rising interest rates. And the national debt ticks ever upward.
The country is staring down nearly $33 trillion in national debt, which is only projected to grow in the coming years and decades. Additionally, the federal budget deficit rose to $1.7 trillion for fiscal 2023, which ended in September, the Treasury Department recently announced.
Automatic cuts to Social Security are estimated to come in 2035 unless something is done, and the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund is expected to be exhausted between 2028 and 2031.
So the idea of a bipartisan fiscal commission is a natural move. However, tough decisions on spending and taxes would still need to be made by elected officials, who are loathe to cross voters.
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Former Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman told the Washington Examiner that he was “very pleased” to hear Johnson throw his support behind a fiscal commission.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that our political system has not been able to deal with this now unsustainable debt and deficit, and I think it’s time to look to a new approach,” Portman said in an interview.
A commission is the only practical way forward, added Portman, a senator from 2011-23, which followed a 1993-2005 House career representing a suburban Cincinnati district. In between, in addition to time in the private sector, Portman worked in President George W. Bush's administration as Office of Management and Budget director and U.S. trade representative. So, he's been party to or witnessed various deficit and debt reduction efforts in recent decades.
In terms of organization, Portman thinks it would make the most sense to make the commission statutory — meaning that it would be enacted into law by Congress rather than done through an executive order. He said doing so would allow it to come back to Congress with recommendations that have fast-track authority so that things are expedited.
“I hope there would be up or down votes eventually on the proposals so that it would make it more likely that some tough policies would be enacted,” Portman said.
He said that the commission should be mostly composed of lawmakers selected by congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle and be evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. He said some outside policy experts should also be involved, although they should be well-versed in the politics of the situation.
Other veteran budget observers say a debt committee couldn’t hurt.
“It’s certainly worth a try,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told the Washington Examiner.
MacGuineas said that the point of a bipartisan and bicameral fiscal commission is that the U.S. is at the moment where it “desperately” needs to take action to address the current fiscal situation.
“The warning signs are basically never-ending at this point,” she said. Politically, she said the situation is dire because there are lawmakers on both sides of the aisle “competing to give away things.”
Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS), a member of both the Ways and Means Committee and the Budget Committee, said in an interview that the fiscal situation is “decades in the making” and described right now as a “tipping point.”
“It’s incumbent upon us to not just address the discretionary spending, but also address some of the long-term programs that are adding to the overspending as well,” Estes said.
Estes said that when Republicans were wading through the drawn-out speaker selection process, the state of U.S. fiscal affairs was driving a lot of discussions about what kind of priorities the GOP wanted to see in a speaker.
“And Speaker Johnson came up and I thought he gave a great speech when he was sworn in and talked about so many of the critical issues, and I was really glad to hear him mention having the fiscal debt commission,” Estes said.
Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, said that the need for a commission comes from the idea that Congress seems unwilling to do its No. 1 job, which is to responsibly budget and align primary surpluses with the government’s liabilities.
“I think that in the current context, it’s very likely that it will help,” de Rugy said during an interview about the prospects of a commission.
The commission appears to already be courting attention from both Republicans and Democrats.
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) is chairman of the House Budget Committee, which would likely be closely involved in the formation of a commission. He said that while not a panacea to fixing the broken budgeting process, a properly set up bipartisan commission could “offer a productive, depoliticized forum for educating the public and identifying solutions regarding our nation’s unsustainable deficit spending and long-term unfunded liabilities.”
“We need to be clear: both parties have contributed to our out-of-control spending and unsustainable spending,” he said in response to written questions from the Washington Examiner. “We’ll need both parties to make structural changes to fix it. A bipartisan debt commission is a great place to start.”
Arrington said that while his committee has the depth and breadth of knowledge to be included in the commission process, there are members on other committees who are equally committed to undertaking such an important task.
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) said that the U.S. deserves a fiscally responsible government and emphasized that lowering the national deficit and passing a budget that reflects the country’s values must be a priority.
“Any potential debt commission must prioritize cutting wasteful spending while making sure our tax code is fair for working families,” the Michigan Democrat said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “That means protecting Social Security and Medicare, while also making sure that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share in taxes.”
Rep. Lisa McClain, Kildee’s Republican colleague from Michigan, praised Johnson for pushing for the formation of such a commission when contacted by the Washington Examiner.
“I applaud his proposed bipartisan debt commission and I hope we move quickly on it, because the longer we wait, the more damage we will do to this country,” she said. “Generations down the line will be paying for our fiscal sins, and Congress cannot sit idly by and watch it happen.”
When the office of Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), also a member of the Budget Committee, was contacted, his spokesman Paul Iskajyan said that the congressman is “awfully concerned about the nation’s unsustainable debt trajectory and what that means for our children’s future.”
The spokesman said that while Peters welcomes Johnson’s support for a bipartisan fiscal commission, his office is “unsure of what exactly the Speaker is proposing and will withhold judgment until we have more details on his plans.”
Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI), who also entered the race for speaker at one point, said that a commission would have to have some power and not just be seen as a throwaway measure. He said that given the country’s fiscal situation, “we need to try something new.”
“Congress created the modern debt crisis, and Congress needs to fix it. I absolutely support forming a debt commission to analyze potential solutions to this crisis,” Bergman told the Washington Examiner. “However, this commission cannot just be used to shield Congress from accountability by making it seem like we are taking action.”
Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-MN) touted the move by Johnson, lauding the idea that both parties would work together to fix the problem.
“Speaker Johnson’s proposal is a truly bipartisan path towards solving this nation’s debt crisis,” Fischbach said. “Americans, regardless of political affiliation, are concerned about our debt and want a bipartisan solution. I am encouraged by the enthusiasm I have seen for this joint commission and look forward to getting to work.”
Tough Decisions or Political Cover?
While a deficit and debt commission may be great in theory, lawmakers still have political incentives to go with their base. So, Republicans are likely to emphasize spending cuts and Democrats tax increases, particularly on higher-income earners.
All of this leads to some suspicions of a commission simply being a political cover for politicians unwilling to make difficult decisions, which could endanger their reelection bids. Though a commission could, in theory, take some of that political weight off the shoulders of elected officials.
“A lot of politicians don’t want to own those choices but understand they need to be made and might be more comfortable saying they are adopting a package even though if they had been in the driver’s seat, they would have done it differently,” MacGuineas said. “But frankly, they’re kind of relieved that somebody else did the heavy lifting for them.”
Portman said there is definitely something to the notion of political cover. He said a commission takes some of the politics out of it. He also said that, politics aside, an important task for the commission would be educating the public about the fiscal challenges and the serious consequences of not acting.
Among the past commissions that have had some success, there's the 1983 National Commission on Social Security Reform, also known as the Greenspan Commission. The commission was tasked with analyzing and making recommendations about the short-term financing crisis that the Social Security system faced at that time.
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“That sort of worked as a model of how things could work,” MacGuineas said of the commission.
There was also the 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also known as Simpson-Bowles. That was focused on fiscal stability and deficit reduction. MacGuineas said that while it didn’t get passed, some proposals developed there were adopted over subsequent years.