The Moment of Truth: The Final Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

President Obama created the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to address the United States' enormous financial challenges. The Commission was charged with identifying policies to improve our fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run. Specifically, the Commission was tasked with making recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015. In addition, the Commission was ordered to propose recommendations that meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government. In short, President Obama tasked the Commission with developing a plan to restore the United States to a balanced budget and long-term financial stability. The National Commission on Financial Stability and Reform issued its final report in December, 2010. The recommendations of the Commission include the following, some of which which the President or Congress have already proposed or implemented: cap domestic spending at 2008 levels through 2020; cut both defense and non-defense spending; impose a three-year wage freeze on all federal employees; enact a payroll tax holiday; and countless other specific proposals and suggestions for legislative action. The Commission wrote in both broad brush strokes and in miniature, suggesting general policy approaches and highly specific program and agency actions in pursuit of those policies. In a jam-packed 70 pages of policy, charts, graphs, and high-level legislative detail, the Commission's Report forms a blueprint to return to fiscal sanity in our country. Both Democrats and Republicans served on the Commission, and worked together to formulate these proposals, and the Commission's Report is likely to serve as the basis for any future bipartisan legislation in these substantive areas.