Americans want to cut the national debt.. A reckoning whose time has come BY RON DZWONKOWSKI - FREE PRESS COLUMNIST - March 8, 2009

Actually no, based on a survey released last week that found Americans are not only aware of the monstrous debt, but consider it a high-priority issue. We don’t like the fact that it makes us seriously beholden to foreign governments, and we have little faith that it will be tackled by the present Washington political establishment.

Therefore, the survey said, most Americans -- who rank our long-term fiscal mess as a problem second only to straightening out our immediate economic mess -- would favor an out-of-Congress approach to getting something done. That means a bipartisan commission to assess the mess, take the public’s temperature, and hand Washington a set of solutions with a legal requirement that they be voted up or down, not merely acknowledged and ignored, like the work of the 9/11 commission.

These conclusions come from research done for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank dedicated to raising awareness of our crushing collective debt and producer of the documentary film "I.O.U.S.A.," which effectively explains how deep a hole we’re really in -- $56.4 trillion (and that was pre-stimulus spending). You can see a truncated version of it and learn probably more than you can bear to know at www.pgpf.org.

If the name sounds familiar, Pete Peterson is a former U.S. Commerce secretary who became a billionaire when his investment company, the Blackstone Group, went public in 2007. The inspiration behind the federal law requiring foundations to give away at least 5% of their assets each year, Peterson used $1 billion of his own to set up the foundation that bears his name and start sounding an alarm about the national debt.

I listened in Wednesday as Foundation President David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general and head of the Government Accountability Office, went over the results of the survey of 1,008 Americans conducted Feb. 18-23 by the respected Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies.

While an overwhelming majority said President Barack Obama’s top priority must be to "get the economy back on track and people back to work," dealing with federal budget deficits and the growing national debt was a solid second, well ahead of resolving the Iraq war, reforming health care and cutting taxes for the middle class.

"Everything in the survey tells me people are ready to start on this journey," pollster Hart said. "They really don’t want to kick this can down the road."

Those surveyed were split on whether the answers ought to involve such things as spending cuts, tax increases or wholesale reforms to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. But by about a 2-1 margin, they preferred using a commission to develop a plan rather than relying on the current congressional budgeting process, which is hamstrung by lobbyists, seniority, horse-trading and everything but a requirement to balance the books.

The deficit was seen as a more serious threat than the continued movement of manufacturing jobs overseas or the development of nuclear weapons by a hostile country. This tells me that Obama’s ambitious agenda -- he expects to start reforming health care and education, extracting us from Iraq and jump-starting an economic recovery this year -- may need to be reordered.

If you think about it, any steps to reduce our accumulating debt are going to have to involve changes in the Medicaid and Medicare systems, which are the big stumbling blocks on health care. The proposed commission also could present Congress an overdue agenda for action on Social Security.

And remember the rules: Solutions must reflect the consensus of the people, the best thinking of our brightest minds, and the decisions of a bipartisan commission. Most important, a plan would have to be voted on, up or down, no alterations in the process. Say yes and hope it works, or say no and defend yourself in the next election.

No, it’s not the usual democratic way. It’s a little more grass-roots at the start, a lot more hard choice at the end. But we are deep into the trillions now, folks. We have to start doing something, don’t we?

While an overwhelming majority said President Barack Obama’s top priority must be to "get the economy back on track and people back to work," dealing with federal budget deficits and the growing national debt was a solid second, well ahead of resolving the Iraq war, reforming health care and cutting taxes for the middle class.

"Everything in the survey tells me people are ready to start on this journey," pollster Hart said. "They really don’t want to kick this can down the road."

Those surveyed were split on whether the answers ought to involve such things as spending cuts, tax increases or wholesale reforms to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. But by about a 2-1 margin, they preferred using a commission to develop a plan rather than relying on the current congressional budgeting process, which is hamstrung by lobbyists, seniority, horse-trading and everything but a requirement to balance the books.

The deficit was seen as a more serious threat than the continued movement of manufacturing jobs overseas or the development of nuclear weapons by a hostile country. This tells me that Obama’s ambitious agenda -- he expects to start reforming health care and education, extracting us from Iraq and jump-starting an economic recovery this year -- may need to be reordered.

If you think about it, any steps to reduce our accumulating debt are going to have to involve changes in the Medicaid and Medicare systems, which are the big stumbling blocks on health care. The proposed commission also could present Congress an overdue agenda for action on Social Security.

And remember the rules: Solutions must reflect the consensus of the people, the best thinking of our brightest minds, and the decisions of a bipartisan commission. Most important, a plan would have to be voted on, up or down, no alterations in the process. Say yes and hope it works, or say no and defend yourself in the next election.

No, it’s not the usual democratic way. It’s a little more grass-roots at the start, a lot more hard choice at the end. But we are deep into the trillions now, folks. We have to start doing something, don’t we?

RON DZWONKOWSKI is associate editor of the Free Press. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.