A debt commission won’t solve any of the federal government’s fiscal problems, but it’s the first step towards taking them seriously.
Just moments after picking up the gavel, newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.) endorsed an idea that manages to be both eye-roll-inducing and really important.
« The greatest threat to our national security is our nation’s debt, » Johnson said during his first speech from the speaker’s dais in the House chamber. « We know this is not going to be an easy task and tough decisions will have to be made, but the consequences—if we don’t act now—are unbearable. »
Then, Johnson promised to « establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately. »
This is, in some ways, a pretty silly idea. After all, Johnson is the newly elected leader of Congress, which is a group of elected officials from two political parties who have the constitutionally granted power to control the federal government’s fiscal policies like borrowing and spending.
Congress is, quite literally, a bipartisan commission tasked with managing the debt.
Within Congress, there’s also a Budget Committee, which is, of course, a bipartisan group of lawmakers tasked even more explicitly with determining how much the government can afford to spend, what it should spend tax revenue on, and when there’s been too much borrowing.
So, yes, the very notion of a new and special bipartisan commission that’s going to do the thing Congress is already supposed to be doing is a little funny and more than a little redundant.
And yet, it’s obvious that something new has to be tried. « In the time that it’s going to take me to deliver this speech, we’ll go up another $20 million in debt.
