Friday, March 25, 2011

Former Heads of the President's Council of Economic Advisors Sound Alarm on Long-Term Deficit

In an op-ed piece that ran in Politco yesterday, ten former heads of the President's Council of Economic Advisors attempted to sound the alarm on the American fiscal crisis, which they suggest is being ignored by both the President and Congress. The ten former advisors served in both Republican and Democratic administrators from Carter to Obama, and their warnings carry weight.

These men and women do not recommend a particular approach to tackling the fiscal crisis, and acknowledge that they would probably disagree with one another on the specifics of any plan. Rather, their joint op-ed piece was simply a call for a proper debate on the problem to begin. They suggest the recommendations put forward in December by National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility as a good starting point for future discussions.

Read the op-ed piece, and read the report of the NCFR. These former presidential advisors are quite correct when they lament the fact that neither Republicans nor Democrats, neither the President nor Congress, is paying nearly enough attention to the fiscal crisis. Sticking our heads in the sand is not going to make this problem go away. The sooner we wake up to reality and begin to deal with it, the better.

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