The closely-followed US debt commission failed to pass its deficit reduction plan Friday, once more pushing back hard choices about America’s ballooning national debt.
Only 11 of the group’s 18 members backed the plan, three short of the 14 required to send it to the House of Representatives and Senate for a vote.
When it became clear the plan would fall, committee co-chair Erskine Bowles begged for stark talk on the federal debt, which is expected to grow by $7.7 trillion by 2020.
“I really am pleading with you, please: Make the tough choices,” he told the members, most of them lawmakers, but also including a pair of business leaders and citizens.
The breadth of the recommendations in the panel’s final report ranged from an overhaul of the tax code to aggressively cutting spending to widespread changes to the Social Security program
Even those who voted against it had strong words for the deficit.
“This is the issue of our time that must be solved,” said labor leader Andy Stern, who nonetheless voted “no” because he favored fewer spending cuts and more tax increases.
In true Washington, D.C.-style, the failed vote on the plan backed by President Barack Obama was immediately spun as a success.
“We’ve changed the conversation in this country,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said. “It’s never going to be the same.”