Democratic Congressman Defends Debt Commission

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Democratic Congressman Defends Debt Commission

By MATT BAI

WASHINGTON — Since releasing their preliminary report last week, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of President Obama’s fiscal commission, have been about as popular in the capital as the stinkbugs that recently swarmed the place. But they have at least one admirer in Earl Blumenauer, the cerebral Democratic congressman from Oregon, who took to the House floor today to urge his colleagues on the left to reconsider their almost universal hostility toward the plan.

Mr. Blumenauer said he doesn’t like all of the proposals for easing the federal debt that Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson laid out in their report, but he thinks they form the basis for a much-needed debate.

“This is one of the rare, tangible and comprehensive approaches that have come through the political process to deal with an issue that everyone should be concerned about,” Mr. Blumenauer said in his planned remarks. “I, for one, will resist efforts to reject the co-chairs’ proposals out of hand.” He described Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson as “reasonable, credible people.”

Mr. Blumenauer’s apostasy shouldn’t really have surprised his colleagues or his stolid allies among the Democratic interest groups. In August, I wrote a Political Times column about Mr. Blumenauer’s unusual argument for debt reduction as a liberal principle.

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