"And I can tell you, if you just think about the interest on the national debt over the next 10 years, it's going to increase by $650 billion. That's $650 billion we could spend on innovation, on research, on education. This is a big, big issue."
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Video: Alan Simpson & Erskine Bowles -- Short excerpt
Start listening at the 1-minute mark.
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Video: Alan Simpson & Erskine Bowles -- Full clip
President Obama has tasked a new commission to target ways to reduce the deficit, projected to hit $1.6 trillion this year. Opponents are concerned the panel could weigh in favor of tax hikes. Judy Woodruff reports interviews the commission co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.
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Partial transcript is below.
BARACK OBAMA: Without action, the accumulated weight of that structural deficit of ever-increasing debt will hobble our economy, it will cloud our future, and it will saddle every child in America with an intolerable burden.
Now, this isn't news. Since the budget surpluses at the end of the 1990s, federal debt has exploded.
JUDY WOODRUFF: That explosive growth has been fed by the cost of two ongoing wars, ever-expanding Social Security and Medicare payments, and, since the financial crisis, bank and automaker rescues, and falling tax revenues.
The president's solution: an 18-member Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, with appointees from both parties, at its helm, co-chairs Democrat Erskine Bowles who was White House chief of staff for President Clinton, and Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming.
BARACK OBAMA: I'm asking them to produce clear recommendations on how to cover the costs of all federal programs by 2015, and to meaningfully improve our long-term fiscal picture.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mr. Obama said, everything is on the table, in a bid to cut the deficit to 3 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, down from well over 10 percent this year.
The recommendations will not be binding. But Republicans immediately warned that the panel will be weighted toward Democrats and liberal groups and is likely to focus on higher taxes.
In a statement, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said: "After trillions in new and proposed spending, Americans know our problem is not that we tax too little, but that Washington spends too much. That should be the focus of this commission."
Mr. Obama had wanted Congress to form a commission with the power to force lawmakers to vote on deficit cuts after the November elections. That idea failed in the Senate last month.
I sat down with the two chairs of the president's new commission in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon.
Erskine Bowles, Senator Alan Simpson, it's good to see both of you.
ERSKINE BOWLES, co-chairman, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform: Thank you. It's great to be here.
ALAN SIMPSON, co-chairman, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform: Good to be here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator Simpson, you told a Montana newspaper this is like being on a suicide mission.
Did you really mean that?
ALAN SIMPSON: Well, I hate -- it's a dual suicide. I'm taking him with me off the cliff.
ALAN SIMPSON: Let me tell you, in all the humor of it, this is dead serious stuff.
And when the two of us were called by the president, you -- you respond. It doesn't matter who the president is. You respect the office. And, when I was contacted, and they said you're going to be in it with Erskine Bowles, and then there are going to be a commission of 18, and I called Erskine, and he said, you know, what we need to do is just push the ball forward, and do it for our grandchildren.
And that's what we're here for. It sounds corny, I know, but that's the way it is.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Erskine Bowles, help people understand, how overwhelming is the job that you have been asked to do?
ERSKINE BOWLES: It's -- it's staggering.
We have a deficit-to-GDP ratio today of 10.6 percent. We got $1.6 trillion in new debt coming on to the country. You know, Judy, I'm at the University of North Carolina now. And I know that, if we don't get our people better educated, we're going to be a second-rate power before you know it.
And I can tell you, if you just think about the interest on the national debt over the next 10 years, it's going to increase by $650 billion. That's $650 billion we could spend on innovation, on research, on education. You know, if we don't do things like that, we -- we're not going to be able to compete in a knowledge-based global economy. This is a big, big issue.