Debt Hawk Alan Simpson on the Work Ahead

Alan K. Simpson seems to be missing that little voice that stops most people from saying everything they think. That means he’s forever making his friends as angry with him as his enemies. A Republican who represented Wyoming in the U.S. Senate from 1979-97, he served as co-chair of President Obama’s federal debt commission, urging fellow conservatives to set aside their opposition to all taxes and liberals to abandon the idea that entitlements can’t be touched. As Congress launches a new bipartisan “super committee” charged with finding more than a trillion dollars in savings—a provision in the just-passed debt deal—BBW asked Simpson to size up their unenviable task.

There’s something every American can do to help the six Democrats and six Republicans who’ll be picked to sit on the new debt-cutting committee in Congress: Pray for them. What an onerous time they have ahead. Oh, they’ll go in there like it’s the first day of school—clean notebooks and brand new pencils—thinking they’re going to squeeze out marvelously clever and inventive new ways to keep the economy from going to hell. But there are no clever and inventive ways to pay down deficits and the debt. We know what we have to do. We just aren’t desperate enough yet to do it.