The congressional debt committee, three weeks from its deadline and reportedly deadlocked, got a polite earful on Tuesday from four of the most passionate proponents of a big, balanced and bipartisan deficit-reduction plan.
When it comes to cutting deficits, don't play small ball.
Since the issue arose in January until now, we take a look back at key moments in the U.S. debt debate.
The mountain roared and gave birth to a mouse. Even after taking the country to the brink of economic disaster, our leaders in Washington still could not forge a broad, bipartisan consensus on a plan to stabilize the debt. As I predicted here last week, Congress found a way to muddle through the current debt limit crisis by promising to deal with the debt later.
The debt ceiling deal President Obama enacted Tuesday cuts deficits and lets the country avert default. But it is getting very muted applause from serious fiscal experts -- the ones who actually understand the federal budget.
Our nation faces the most predictable economic crisis in its history. Spending is rising rapidly, and revenues are failing to keep pace. As a result, the federal government is forced to borrow huge sums each year to make up the difference. If not addressed, burgeoning deficits will eventually lead to a fiscal crisis, at which point the world's financial markets will force decisions upon us.
President Obama on Wednesday officially threw his weight behind an idea to revamp the way Americans currently pay their individual tax bills, getting rid of popular breaks to lower all income brackets.
Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz issued a harsh indictment of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction proposal Monday, arguing the plan would slow economic growth and lead to a weaker America.
As lawmakers continued to butt heads over how much spending should be cut over the next seven months, a few senators on Tuesday were trying to keep the focus where they think it belongs -- the next several decades.
Talk about not mincing words. Democrat Kent Conrad, the Senate budget chairman, laid bare his extreme frustration with President Obama's 2012 budget request this week.
President Obama will release his proposed budget in less than a week, and clues are starting to surface about what programs will be sacrificed to the gods of deficit reduction.
Commentary: Maya MacGuineas is the director of the fiscal policy program at the New America Foundation.
Defying expectations, more than 60% of President Obama's debt commission voted Friday in favor of the group's final recommendations for reducing the country's long-term debt.
The deficit reduction plan that President Obama's bipartisan commission will vote on tomorrow is drawing sharp fire from ideological groups on both the left and the right. To bring federal spending in line with revenues, the proposal released by co-chairmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles inflames liberals by slashing spending on social programs and conservatives by raising taxes.
Tucked in among the controversial spending cuts proposed by President Obama's debt commission Wednesday, was a little piece of stimulus -- a tax break that could benefit workers.
The leaders of President Obama's debt commission said Tuesday that they would delay a vote on final recommendations until Friday.
Twenty years ago last month, a new breed of Republicans was asserting itself in Congress. President George H.W. Bush thought he had bipartisan support for a budget deal to tackle the deficit through steep spending cuts and some tax increases.
The Republicans' midterm surge has given the federal debt-reduction commission -- whose recommendations are due Dec. 1 -- a chance to stand up and be counted. The panel is bipartisan, but as long as Democrats were able to have their way ultimately in both houses of Congress, Republican members had little clout. Now that the balance of power has shifted, the ideas of the panel's deficit hawks, such as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), may get a bit more respect. Co-chairs Erskine Bowles (chief of staff for Bill Clinton) and Alan Simpson (former GOP senator from Wyoming) have offered a proposal, but it's only a draft. We'll know the commission blew its opportunity ...
Cut the budget! That was the rallying cry for many candidates of both parties, but if you listened closely, you heard little in the way of specifics.
Commentary: Maya MacGuineas is the director of the fiscal policy program at the New America Foundation.
This week, co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson issued their joint proposal for consideration by the full National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Their joint proposal represents a commendable, comprehensive, aggressive and good faith effort to address our nation's structural deficit. It recognizes the need for economic recovery now while addressing the structural deficits that represent the real threat to our collective future.
CNN's John King discusses the tough decisions behind cutting the deficit.
So much to love. So much to hate.
The release Wednesday of a draft proposal for reducing the federal deficit made clear how hard it will be to devise a sustainable plan that can win the necessary political support.
In a surprise move Wednesday, the co-chairmen of President Obama's fiscal commission released their preliminary proposals to curb growth in U.S. debt.
Just when we are exhausted from hard times, we have to brace ourselves for more of them around the corner.
Here's a list of the names and affiliations of the 18 members sitting on President Obama's Bipartisan National Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
President Obama issued an executive order on Thursday that formally creates a bipartisan fiscal commission, a first step to forcing painful decisions needed to get the U.S. debt load under control.
Washington in the fall of 2005 suffers from an acute shortage of humor, especially of the self-deprecating variety.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is once again being dogged by events in Iraq as he faces the last conference of his Labour Party before next spring's expected national elections.
Promising to cut the federal budget has become one of the regrettable rituals of autumn in America. In almost every year since Ronald Reagan incited the modern revolt against "waste, fraud, and abu...
Fortune: NOW HEAR THIS updated: Mon Dec 30 1991 00:01:00
ALAN SIMPSON, 60, U.S. Senator (R-Wyoming), on the crime bill: ''I come from a state where gun control is just how steady you hold your weapon.''
Your correspondent was approached the other day by a Time Inc. senior statesman who, it emerged, was not interested in chitchat but was instead hustling a certain election bet. His proposition, ins...
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