Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has appointed Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to serve on the President's fiscal panel tasked with developing a plan to bring down the $12.3 trillion national debt.
The President said that the commission can consider everything, including new taxes, spending cuts and changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, in order to reach his goal of balancing the federal budget except for debt interest payments by 2015. Obama is asking Congress to consider the panel's recommendations.
Obama will appoint six people to the 18-member panel and up to four can come from the same party. Leaders in Congress will choose the other 12 members, with three coming from the Republican and Democratic caucus in each chamber.
Reid is the first congressional leader to announce his picks. The majority leader said that he would make sure that the panel's recommendations, which are non-binding, receive votes in the Senate. Both Baucus and Conrad are noted centrists, a group of lawmakers that has made debt and deficit issues a priority.
"I would like to say to the panel: Social Security's long-term solvency can be resolved by relatively modest adjustments, and without cutting benefits," stressed Barbara J. Easterling, President of the Alliance for Retired Americans. To see the Alliance's latest document on Social Security, which refutes opponents' charges that today's budget problems are due to Social Security, click HERE
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