A fiscal house divided

Saturday, May 1, 2010 | 2:06 a.m.

One of the reasons why Barack Obama was elected president was that the American people knew he would talk to them like adults, leveling with them on the tough choices facing the nation. So far during his presidency, he has not let us down.

He came into office under the most trying of circumstances: The United States was still waging two wars and the country’s economy was mired in a deep recession that was brought on by the near collapse of some of the biggest financial institutions. Nevertheless, despite fierce Republican opposition that has contributed to his approval ratings slipping, the president was able to get Congress to approve a stimulus bill that averted an economic disaster, and he helped secure passage of health care reform legislation.

Still, there is much more work to be done, and one of those key areas is fiscal responsibility. That is why we were heartened this year when Obama created a bipartisan commission to make recommendations to Congress and the president on how best to rein in this country’s growing federal debt. The principal reason for the debt explosion is that President George W. Bush and his Republican backers in Congress ran up the deficit, not making spending cuts to offset huge tax cuts that Congress approved.

On Tuesday, the day the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform met for the first time, Obama alluded to the tough challenges ahead. The president has found areas in government to trim — $20 billion in cuts this year have been identified — and he has advocated “pay-as-you-go” budgeting: the rule that says Congress can’t spend money on a new entitlement program or pass a tax cut unless comparable savings are found elsewhere to offset it. But he noted that more sweeping changes will be required.

“For even as we rein in waste and ask that Congress account for every dollar it spends, this alone will not make up for the years in which those in Washington refused to make the hard choices and live within their means,” Obama said during a ceremony at the White House. “And it will not make up for the chronic failure to level with the American people about the costs of the services that they value. This is going to require people of both parties to come together and take a hard look at the growing gap between what the government spends and what the government raises in revenue. And it will require that we put politics aside — that we think more about the next generation than the next election. There is simply no other way to do it.”

The president acknowledged that putting politics aside, though, won’t be easy. “In theory, there are few issues on which there is more vigorous bipartisan agreement than fiscal responsibility,” he said. “But in practice, this responsibility for the future is overwhelmed by the politics of the moment. It falls prey to special interest pressures, to the pull of local concerns, and to the reality familiar to every single American — it’s a lot easier to spend a dollar than to save one. That’s what, at root, led to these exploding deficits. And that is what will lead to a day of reckoning.”

The Republicans in Congress seem at times to rejoice in roughing up this Democratic president. We understand that there are going to be many times that partisanship will happen — it’s natural and it’s how parties define themselves to voters.

But getting a handle on the deficit is going to require that Democrats and Republicans make concessions to find common ground. Indeed, we were encouraged to hear the president say this week that “everything has to be on the table.” In an effort at consensus-building on the commission, it will require a supermajority — 14 of 18 members — to forward its recommendations to Congress and the president.

The reality is that spending cuts alone aren’t going to put a dent in, let alone erase, the national debt over time. For that matter, tax hikes alone aren’t realistic. We don’t envy members of the commission as they embark on this task, but getting our fiscal house in order is mandatory if our economy is to fully prosper.