It should focus on long-term entitlement reform rather than short-term cuts.
It is important for us to deal with our long-term entitlement spending.
Administration officials agree that the most difficult fiscal challenges by far have to do with long-term entitlement programs.
The present value of the gap between America's long-term entitlement promises and its expected tax revenues looks to be more than $70 trillion.
Long-term entitlement overhaul, including steps to shore up Social Security by curbing benefits and increasing payroll taxes, represents only part of the equation.
Long-term entitlement reductions are more valuable, and important, than cuts in discretionary programs, which can be reversed in annual appropriations.
Additionally, in recent talks on generational theft, I have stated clearly that a debt crisis could happen a number of years from now "if and only if" we don't address soon our long-term entitlement problems.
Republicans are pushing for immediate cuts even below the levels of the sequester and seem to think they could use the debt limit to force the White House into long-term entitlement reductions.
In the text of the letter, Mr. Singer proposes a reformed tax code, better financial regulation, an energy development and efficiency plan and fixes to long-term entitlement programs as steps in the right direction.
But it is riddled with codewords about the "long-term entitlement problem" which, it avers, can only be solved by a "bipartisan commission" acting on well-known options, behind closed doors.
And with only modest government funds we could foster public-private partnerships to rebuild this country's often crumbling infrastructure, refashion immigration policy to give preference for visas and green cards to many more immigrants with advanced degrees and needed skills, and above all reduce long-term entitlement obligations, cutting the ratio of public debt to G.D.P.
