They have long urged the president to publicly embrace the work of his own fiscal commission. Simpson, Bowles come in from cold

After four months, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles finally got what they sought when they stepped out with a deficit reduction plan in December: President Barack Obama’s approval.

Bowles and Simpson had long urged the president to more publicly embrace the work of his own fiscal commission, which they served as chairmen. And after keeping his distance, Obama brought them back into the fold Thursday, praising the two Washington veterans at an Oval Office meeting.


The arc of Simpson, Bowles and their deficit drive is a classic case of a neglected Washington issue that gains its moment in the spotlight, then loses it and then grabs it again.

Appointed with fanfare by the president more than a year ago, the chairmen produced a report that Simpson once described as a “stink bomb in the Rose Garden.” They lobbied the Hill, they launched a nonprofit to push the report, and they even entertained the idea of a multi-state RV tour to campaign for the cause — anything to keep up pressure on an issue that Obama didn’t seem to care much about anymore.

Now, cutting deficits are all the rage again, and so are these two guys.

Obama’s shifting posture towards the commission reflected his own ambivalence about where the deficit ranked on his to-do list.

Their work helped “shape my thinking on these issues,” Obama said Thursday, a day after announcing his deficit plan at George Washington University. “So my main purpose here today is to once again thank them for their outstanding work, but more importantly to solicit their ideas in terms of how we move forward.”

The chairmen of the resurgent panel later told reporters: Really, no hard feelings.

“I know, and as many of you know, Al and I encouraged him to go earlier, and I think we were probably wrong,” Bowles said. “We had hoped they would come out right away. They said, ‘You know, be a little patient Erskine, we’ll be there.’”

Simpson quipped that they were “out of witness protection.”

While the welcome may be warmer, the president went only so far in adopting their ideas.

“If my analysis is correct, the president’s proposal is much less demanding than the Simpson-Bowles commission proposal is,” said William Galston, a former Clinton administration policy adviser and Brookings Institution fellow. “The assumption in the first wave of coverage was that the president had embraced the Simpson-Bowles approach. I think that is only partly true.”

Obama used the commission’s framework, calling for changes to Medicare, Medicaid, defense spending and the tax code. But on a key metric — debt as a share of GDP — Obama’s proposal would reduce it to 75 percent by 2023, versus 60 percent under Bowles-Simpson, according to Galston’s analysis.

In terms of timing, the White House argues it had a strategy all along. The administration would take on the deficit only after the current fiscal-year budget was settled and once Republicans stepped forward with their own entitlement reform plan.

Aides said the president always valued the commission’s work, adopted several recommendations in his 2012 budget proposal and maintained contact with the chairmen either personally or through staff such as Bruce Reed, the commission’s executive director before he became the vice president’s chief of staff.

“The President was very appreciative of the work that they did, thought it was extremely important,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. That “was the case in December and has been the case every day since then, and will be the case going forward.”

Over the last few months, though, Obama also made clear that deficit reduction was secondary to his “winning the future” agenda. That strategy was driven by what his senior aides believed voters care about most — jobs, not deficits.

When the 18-member commission issued its report in December but couldn’t produce the 14 votes required to force Congress to consider its plan, the president issued a tepid statement saying only that the commission’s work was important and that he would study it closely.

The State of the Union address and his 2012 budget request came and went without Obama embracing any major components of the commission’s plan, which called for raising the retirement age for Social Security and reducing some Medicare and Medicaid benefits. He did adopt some elements, including a freeze in pay for federal workers and medical malpractice reforms.

But the frustration on Capitol Hill only grew. In early March, the White House convened an anti-bullying summit, annoying fiscal hawks who had been pressing the president for months to give the same kind of platform to the deficit.

Bowles and Simpson started the Moment of Truth Project, a nonprofit aimed at raising awareness about the report. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, suggested to Simpson, 79, and Bowles, 65, that they travel the country in an RV.

“They drew the line,” she said. “They didn’t jump up and down at the chance.”

Throughout it all, a small bipartisan group of senators, known as the Gang of Six, did as much as anybody to keep the deficit-reduction campaign alive in Washington. They’ve been meeting since December to turn the commission’s report into a piece of legislation, laying the groundwork well before the president re-entered the debate this week.

“Pray for the Gang of Six,” Simpson told two reporters after the president’s speech, according to the Wall Street Journal. “They are six guys, three Republicans, three Democrats, that are committed to doing something. Just pray for the gang of six.”

OnThursday, Bowles and Simpson had nothing but kind words for the president and his proposal.

“We found it to be a very constructive meeting,” Bowles said. “We are very pleased.”

Simpson said the best thing about the renewed focus on confronting the national debt is that Biden will lead a bipartisan group of lawmakers to produce a comprehensive agreement. He was more skeptical, though, about the late-June deadline.

“Having spent 18 years here and watching people set dates is a lost cause,” said Simpson, a former Wyoming senator. “It’s the goofiest thing you can do to say, ‘By this date we will be there.’”

Still, Simpson said he has faith that all the various plans afoot — including from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Obama, the Gang of Six and whoever else — can be culled for the best ideas.

Now that he and Bowles are out of “witness protection,” Simpson said, “I got two things to say to you: If you spend more than you earn, you lose your butt, and if you spend a buck and borrow 40 cents of it, you have got to be stupid.”

He added, “This is what we are going to correct with the White House, House and the Senate. It will work. I don’t know when.”

Julie Mason contributed to this story

