Fall 2013 – Pivotal Time for Our Nation

With summer officially over – the kids are back in school and the parents are back to normal hours – now comes the return of “regular order” in Washington, D.C. Beginning this Friday when the Senate returns from a six-week recess, both Chambers will be back in session.

The issues that they must tackle – most of which are budgetary – are immensely difficult. Put simply, with September upon us, the clock is now ticking and our leaders in Washington must work together to find common ground on our country’s fiscal future, specifically in regard to sequestration, the expiration of funding for the government, the approaching debt ceiling and as I wrote about last week, tax reform.

With the exception of the latter, Members of Congress have only nine legislative days in September to make headway.  In the nearest of terms, unless our elected leaders take action, the end of September will also be the end of the Continuing Resolution – the law that funds the federal government’s day-to-day operations.  Absent a so-called continuing resolution (CR), the government will “shut down” on October 1. Such an occurrence would mean that non-essential services would be discontinued due to lack of funding.

While most remain optimistic that a deal will be made – nothing is D.C. is a certainty these days.

Nonetheless, in an ideal world, the debate surrounding the CR would lead to a comprehensive agreement that will address sequestration and the debt ceiling and put the national debt on a downward path relative to the economy. Specifically, lawmakers should use this opportunity to reposition the arbitrarily created sequestration as it was intended – to spur a bipartisan agreement on politically sensitive tax and entitlement reforms. Our economy – nationally and here in Minnesota – needs a truly comprehensive plan to fix our debt, for the benefit of all Americans both now and in the generations to come.

Short of a comprehensive agreement, there are several packages that our elected leaders could consider that would responsibly address the upcoming fiscal speed bumps, make progress on controlling deficits and debt, and put in place a real process for fiscal negotiations to continue in earnest. At a minimum, they should pursue either a partial replacement or a spending agreement which offsets any spending above the caps imposed by sequestration to avoid adding to the debt.

In sum, it is imperative that the President and Members of Congress put into place a formal process to hold discussions to develop a plan for how to fund the government, deal with the sequester, and avoid a government default. Our elected leaders must not punt on this latest opportunity to deal with our short- and long-term fiscal challenges in an intelligent manner this country is worthy of. Stopgap measures and short-term funding mechanisms are simply no way to govern and policymakers simply cannot continue to go from crisis to crisis, only avoiding manufactured catastrophes at the last moment and providing nothing more than usual small ball solutions that fail to address our underlying structural problems.

Now is the time for Congressional leadership from both sides of the aisle to move to specifics and bring about the economic stability and policy certainty a comprehensive, long-term fiscal reform agreement could deliver.