The Hill

 

Now that the national debt-ceiling deal is done — and liberals like me are unhappy and conservatives deservedly have more to cheer about — Thanksgiving 2011 will be more than about good turkeys. 

This is the deadline for the so-called “super” congressional committee of six Democrats and six Republicans from the House and Senate to cut at least $1.2 trillion in the projected budget deficit for the next 10 years. 

I favor at least one-half of this $1.2 trillion to be funded by a combination of tax reform — closing tax loopholes — and increases in marginal tax rates of upper-income taxpayers (including me). 

But if you are an anti-tax conservative who sincerely believes that you have to cut spending and not “feed the beast” with more revenues, then one approach on spending cuts for the super committee to consider is the simple and creative “Penny Plan” introduced by Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla. 

Mr. Mack’s bill, H.R. 1848, would cut one penny out of every dollar actually spent by the federal government from year to year for the next six years, from FY 2012-FY 2017.

Beginning in FY 2018, there would be a budget cap of 18 percent of GDP (the average federal revenue as a percentage of GDP over the past 30 years). And by FY 2019, America would finally have a balanced budget — that is, assuming revenues naturally increase from the current 14.8 percent of GDP to 18 percent of GDP by 2019, after which the budget would be in surplus. 

There is an automatic spending cut “trigger” under Mack’s plan — one he came up with well before the trigger used in the recently passed national debt ceiling bill. 

If Congress failed to enact a budget implementing the 1 percent actual spending cut required under Mack’s measure, then there would be automatic, across-the-board actual cuts in all federal programs to meet the 1 percent reduction, and that means all: in defense, Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, defense, and national security spending. Everything. 

Mack’s plan may seem draconian to some. It would cut the accumulated budget deficits by an estimated $7.5 trillion over 10 years — more than three times the amount achieved by the debt-ceiling deal that Congress approved last Tuesday.

But it actually has a rather modest impact on reducing our total national debt. It won’t be until eight years from now that the budget will be in balance and the national debt starts getting paid down. 

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