–President Obama To Send Panel His Deficit Cutting Ideas Monday
–House Speaker Boehner Tells Panel To Focus On Entitlement Reforms
–Rep. Boehner Urges Panel To Outline Tax Reform Principles; No Tax Hike
–Nearly Three Dozen Senators Admonish Panel To ‘Go Big’ on Deficit Cut

By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) – Congress’s Joint Select Committee on Deficit
Reduction which was created this summer to secure $1.5 trillion in
budget savings is not wanting for attention.

When its members met Thursday morning for a private breakfast on
the first floor of the Capitol, nearly three dozen reporters waited
outside the room, seeking comments from the lawmakers as they departed.

Later in the day, the panel received far more high-profile
attention.

First, in a speech to the Washington Economic Club, House Speaker
John Boehner had plenty of advice for the so-called Super Committee.

First, he urged the panel to focus exclusively on deficit reduction
through spending cuts and reforms. “When it comes to producing savings
to reach its $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction target, the Joint Select
Committee has only one option: spending cuts and entitlement reform,” he
said.

The Speaker said the panel should not even think of tax increases
as a way to reach its deficit goals, saying they are not a “viable
option” for the panel.

Boehner did encourage the panel to explore tax reform ideas as a
way of preparing a later congressional effort to overhaul the tax code.
He said the committee should offer “principles for broad-based tax
reform.”

“It’s probably not realistic to think the Joint Committee could
rewrite the tax code by Nov. 23. But it can certainly lay the groundwork
by then,” he said.

At about the same time that Boehner was speaking, a group of nearly
three dozen senators held a briefing, urging the panel to swing for the
fences on deficit reduction. The group of senators said the deficit
panel should assemble a $4 trillion deficit reduction package.

“Be brave, be bold, go big,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman
Kent Conrad at the briefing.

Conrad’s admonishment to “go big” uses a term that a group of 50
budget and business leaders has adopted in their advice to the panel.

“As you begin your important work to reach a deficit reduction
agreement, we urge you to ‘go big’ and develop a large-scale debt
reduction package to stabilize the debt as a share of the economy,” the
budget and business leaders said in a letter to the congressional panel
this week.

“We believe that a go big approach that goes well beyond the $1.5
trillion deficit reduction goal that the Committee has been charged with
and includes major reforms of entitlement programs and the tax code is
necessary to bring the debt down to a manageable and sustainable level,
improve the long-term fiscal imbalance, reassure markets, and restore
Americans’ faith in the political system,” the letter adds.

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan also told a
congressional panel this week that Congress’s new deficit reduction
panel should secure $4 trillion in budget savings over a decade “at a
minimum.”

The next piece of high profile advice the congressional will
receive will come Monday when President Obama sends his package of
deficit cutting ideas to the panel.

It is unclear if Obama will propose anything new or rework some of
the proposals he floated during his talks this past summer with Boehner
about a possible “grand bargain” on the budget.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction will meet again
Thursday to consider “Revenue Options and Reforming the Tax Code.”

Thomas Barhold, the chief of staff of Congress’s Joint Committee on
Taxation, will testify. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. ET.

The panel is charged to submit a report to Congress by Nov. 23,
2011 that reduces the deficit by $1.5 trillion between 2012 and 2021.

The final package, if one is agreed to by the majority of the
panel’s 12 members, must be voted on without amendment by the House and
Senate by Dec. 23, 2011.

If the panel fails to agree on a spending cut package or Congress
rejects its plan, a budget enforcement trigger would secure $1.2
trillion in budget savings through across-the-board cuts.

The cuts would be equally divided between defense and non-defense
programs but would exempt Social Security, Medicaid and low-income
programs.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **

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