How to Redeem Congress? Reform REDS

Is this frozen Congress beginning to show signs of a spring thaw: Republicans dining at the White House; Lindsey Graham talking about revenue; Obama posting Medicare reforms on the web?  Is the ice getting rotten?


The most unpopular Congress in decades is badly in need of redemption. Now, perhaps, is the time to Reform REDS – reform revenues, reform entitlements, reform discretionary spending. If Congress could do all three at once, everyone will be upset about one or another part, but the whole would boost our credit,
credibility and redeem Congress and politics in the eyes of the public.

The key is all three at once – an almost insurmountable goal if the usual committee fragmentation allows special interests to lobby item by item, piece by piece. But Congressional leaders can by-pass that process and risk by appointing a panel – Senate and House -- to make a deal

• on three or four revenue items (e.g., carried interest, estate tax, foreign corporate tax shelters),
• two entitlement matters (e.g., social security and medicare tax lids, means testing medicare, changing inflation indexing),
• and three or four discretionary spending cuts (e.g., Defense, rationalizing the runaway intelligence contracts, reducing the cabinet by merging Education back into a HEW department or Labor with Commerce.)

The deal could be unamended and subject to an up and down. Likely? No. Possible? Yes.

If Congress does not reform REDS in one combination, it won’t happen. But the ice is thawing and getting mushy; now is the time for a bold break-through.