A Budget That Might Set the Stage for Big Changes

By David Nather | February 25, 2009 12:36 PM | | Comments (0)

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad is a big believer in the “grand bargain”: dealing with health care, the tax code, Social Security, and all other aspects of the nation’s long-term fiscal pressures all at once. President Obama didn’t talk about the fiscal situation in those terms last night, and Conrad wishes he had.

But the most important thing Obama will do to set the stage for that kind of bargain, Conrad says, will happen when he releases his first budget proposal tomorrow.

Obama has already promised to end the “accounting gimmicks” the Bush administration used to hide the true scale of the mounting deficits. Last night, after Obama’s speech, Conrad told reporters he had been briefed about the budget numbers. He said he couldn’t discuss them yet, though we already know they will reveal the reality of trillion-dollar deficits.

But once the budget is out and the curtain is pulled back, Conrad said, the stark reality of the fiscal crisis will make the public more likely to consider a “special process” for Congress to make the painful tradeoffs to solve those problems.

“This is going to be partly informed by what these numbers reveal,” said Conrad. “When you see those numbers, they’re very sobering.”

Will they be bad enough to overcome the resistance to a commission, or task force, that would just tell Congress what to do? It depends how bad the budget numbers are. So tune in tomorrow — and prepare to be scared.

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