Tuesday, June 08, 2010

The commission to study deficits is broke

From the you can't make this up department...
President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission is operating on a shoestring budget and some panel members and lawmakers worry that it may run short of money.

The 18-member commission faces the daunting challenge of coming up with proposals by Dec. 1 to tame the federal government’s trillion-dollar budget deficit. But the panel’s own budget is only $500,000, barely enough to cover office rent and the salaries of four staff members.

And though the White House and Treasury have loaned the panel experts from their own payrolls, and several think tanks are helping as well, the total full-time staff currently is only about 15 people and not expected to exceed 20. Money is so tight that the commission recently abandoned hopes of holding field hearings around the country to gather views from outside of Washington.
Read the rest here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fixing a more than $1 trillion deficit for $500K is like paying someone about $25 to sell your house for $100K. Is this a sick joke? Statmann

The Anti-Gnostic said...

I'm going to say you could find plenty of bright, talented and resourceful people willing to serve on such a commission without remuneration. Pay the $500K for a staff of data-gatherers and I promise you any such commission could come up with a comprehensive plan for reduction of the deficit in 12 months. There are probably a 100 doctoral theses floating out there now on how to reduce the deficit.

For that matter, give me the government's line-item budget and in a month I promise you I'll have the books balanced.