{"id":40896,"date":"2009-11-12T09:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T14:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"1bb9f0c6-ef13-4eaf-baf2-7b36bad409d0"},"modified":"2009-11-12T09:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T14:40:00","slug":"senators-wont-grow-deficit-without-a-cost-cutting-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/40896","title":{"rendered":"Senators Won&#8217;t Grow Deficit Without A Cost-Cutting Commission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Congress may outsource its tough budgetary decisions, if moderate, deficit-anxious lawmakers get their way. &#8220;Several U.S. senators said on Tuesday they probably could force Congress to cede some control to a bipartisan commission that would tackle the United States&#8217; looming budget crisis,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/politicsNews\/idUSTRE5A950520091110\">Reuters<\/a> reports. <\/p>\n<p>A group of 15 Democratic senators say they will not vote for deficit-boosting legislation unless the commission is created. The commission would come up with budget-control plans that Congress would have to approve, and could give lawmakers some political cover. The country faced record deficits in 2009 because of the recession, and &#8220;(b)udget experts project that deficits will remain stubbornly high over the next 10 years even as the economy improves, due to ballooning spending on retirement and healthcare programs&#8221; (Sullivan, 11\/10). <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Among (the commission&#8217;s) chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/senate\/67293-sens-squeeze-speaker-over-commission\">The Hill<\/a> reports. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is meanwhile pushing on the other side of the Capitol to raise the debt ceiling. &#8220;If the debt ceiling is not raised above its current $12.1 trillion mark by (next month), the government will exceed its borrowing limits and will be forced to default on the debt&#8221; (Allen and Alarkon, 11\/10).<\/p>\n<p>(Related KHN story: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaiserhealthnews.org\/Stories\/2009\/November\/11\/bend-cost-curve-health.aspx\" >On Hill, Bipartisan Support Emerging For Commission To Control Costs<\/a>, Pianin, 11\/11).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/khn\/fulltext\/~4\/f_xfJKJlDrg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congress may outsource its tough budgetary decisions, if moderate, deficit-anxious lawmakers get their way. &#8220;Several U.S. senators said on Tuesday they probably could force Congress to cede some control to a bipartisan commission that would tackle the United States&#8217; looming budget crisis,&#8221; Reuters reports. A group of 15 Democratic senators say they will not vote [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}