The Pulse: Congress needs a debt vote

Start voting.

That's my wish for the Congress when it comes to solutions regarding our nearly $15 trillion debt.

Three major bipartisan efforts in Washington offered long-term solutions to our astronomical indebtedness, but none resulted in up-or-down votes in Congress that would have provided a measure of accountability for the folks at home.

Simpson-Bowles was the first. After about a year of painstaking work, that bipartisan commission, made up of 18 members, could not get the requisite 14 votes to force congressional action on its plan.

The members' recommendations were a laundry list of third-rail issues: cutting the number of federal workers and the Defense Department; increasing the cost of participating in veterans' and military health care; raising the Social Security eligibility age; and reforming the tax code, including eliminating many tax credits and deductions.

They left no stone unturned. No special interest was left unscarred. Yet there was no vote, so voters lack a measuring stick to judge their members of Congress on the Simpson-Bowles proposal.

Instead, in the spring, House Republicans passed a partisan measure that would have cut federal spending by nearly $6 trillion while embracing a plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) to reform Medicare. The plan failed to secure a single Democratic vote.

The next major bipartisan effort was the attempt by President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner to work out a grand bargain on raising the debt ceiling. It was reported at the time that the two sides were on the verge of agreeing to a two-stage strategy for raising the debt limit and cutting more than $4 trillion out of the federal budget through 2021. Reportedly, that plan would have included unprecedented cuts in spending, including at the Pentagon, and significant changes to Medicare and Social Security, the biggest drivers of future borrowing - a major concession for Obama and other Democrats. But those negotiations collapsed and deteriorated into finger-pointing. Plenty of members of Congress made their feelings known about various reported deals, but there was never an actual vote on a long-term solution.