UW campuses hold national debt events

(UNDATED) The first of three Wisconsin forums on the national debt drew audiences to several UW campuses last night. They listened to a bipartisan panel of experts, who described the debt as a crisis with no easy solutions.

Paul Bixby of the bipartisan Concord Coalition, Alice Rivlin, a Democrat on President Obama's Debt Commission, and Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation found some common ground despite their political differences. All three agreed that the debt is a moral issue that will affect future generations, that there are no easy fixes like cutting waste or growing the economy, and that a rapidly-aging population has put Social Security and Medicare on an unsustainable path.

Campus audiences in Milwaukee, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh and Wausau had a chance to submit questions to the panelists in Washington DC.

In the Wausau audience, the panel’s message was well received by Sami Abedeer, a local business and finance instructor.

“The way Washington operates concerning finances, it is insane. It's not even in the economics books which we've been teaching for the last 100 years."

James Romansky, a retired Wausau businessman, had some advice for political leaders. He says they should cut spending and balance the budget, bring the troops home, and “maybe get term limits for our politicians so we can keep them away from the people that want them to spend the money."

The Washington panel disagreed on how to fix the debt.

The Concord Coalitions’ Bixby wanted all the Bush tax cuts to expire, Reidl of the Heritage Foundation wanted to keep all of them in place, and Rivlin of the Presidential Debt Commission wanted to keep them for the middle class but not the wealthy.

The three panelists also disagreed on the President's health care reform law. But all three agreed that Social Security needed to be reformed, either through benefit cuts, raising the retirement age, or raising the cap on payroll taxes.

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