Our country has seen many so-called fiscal commissions, and each one of them has failed to produce meaningful change. So why are some voices in both parties floating the idea again?
Because a fiscal commission that represents the interests of wealthy elites can be set up with special procedures to bypass Congress. That means, the people we elect to represent us might not even get a say in whatever cuts a fiscal commission proposes.
A commission could propose measures that target working people and the most vulnerable. It could recommend steep cuts to agency missions, Social Security, and Medicare and Medicaid. It could shutter facilities and cost jobs in districts all across the country. And it could do all that in a way that limits input from our elected officials, weakening our democratic processes, all under the guise of austerity and responsibility.
The House Budget Committee last week held a hearing to examine three bills that would recommend measures regarding fiscal policy, traditionally the domain of congressional budgeting and tax committees.
The bills – H.R. 710, H.R. 5779, and S. 3262 – would establish another fiscal commission, whose “expert” members would have enormous power to shape our country’s fiscal policy. The commission recommendations are also immune from amendment.
AFGE is strongly opposed to forming another fiscal commission.
“To establish such a commission would be a confession of failure by Congress to perform its basic Constitutional responsibilities of setting tax policy and providing for the common defense and general welfare of the American people,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a letter to House Budget Committee leadership.
Kelley explained that over the past two decades Congress has failed to raise revenues to pay for various costly wars, trillion-dollar bailouts for banks and employers affected by the pandemic and subprime mortgage crises, and tax cuts that largely benefited corporations and the wealthy. As a result, the national debt has ballooned from $2.8 trillion in 1989 to over $33 trillion today.
At the same time, lawmakers have done little to address the problems through regular order. They, for example, have yet to advance Rep. John Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act that would modernize Social Security, increase benefits, and safeguard the trust fund – all without raising taxes on middle income Americans or raising the retirement age.
From the structure of these bills’ proposals, it’s clear a new fiscal committee will likely do what its predecessors did: cut social safety net programs and government services that are important to working people, the elderly, the sick, the most vulnerable – instead of seeking sacrifices across society. They are likely to propose measures that are as extreme and one-sided as those House Republicans have tried to pass.
Federal workers have also been repeatedly targeted for cuts. Following the last subprime mortgage crisis, for example, federal employees suffered three years of pay freezes and cuts in retirement benefits. They have contributed hundreds of billions to “deficit reduction,” a sacrifice asked of no one else.
While the U.S. population has nearly doubled, federal civilian employment today is less than it was in the 1960s. Federal agencies have been chronically underfunded and understaffed. Federal workers’ pay also lags the private sector by more than 25%.
“America’s civil servants, whom we represent, have already done more than their fair share of deficit reduction,” Kelley said.
“The history of fiscal commissions is a history of failure. The commissions represent the interests of the comfortable and propose punitive measures toward others less comfortable, all in the name of austerity and responsibility,” he added. “We urge the Committee and Congress as a whole to reject the measures under discussion today.”