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Members of the new Congressional Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction will have a threshold decision to make: Do they want to take their mandate seriously?

If the answer is yes, they will likely have to make decisions in the public interest that will not sit well with the party leaders who appointed them. If the answer is no, they will heighten public frustration with the political process and risk deep automatic cuts in programs many of them care about.

Which should it be?

The answer is obvious. In hard times, the national interest always tops narrow or partisan concerns. And yet, pressure on members of the committee to fiercely protect the interests of favored constituencies will be enormous. It has already begun in the form of intense lobbying of party leaders to only appoint “safe” members who are firmly opposed to compromise. 

Arrayed against this pressure is the stark reality that we can’t fund future spending commitments with today’s level of taxation. Unless someone steps up to the challenge of reconciling the competing values and needs of a diverse society, our nation will suffer the consequences -- not just within some artificial 10-year “budget window,” but for decades to come. 

Failure to confront this challenge got us into the fiscal ditch we’re in. The Joint Committee has...

By Ryan Schoenike

The debate over our nation’s finances has now reached what seems to be common place in Washington. As our country sits on the verge of default, both parties have retreated to their partisan foxholes, only coming out to throw the next dose of heated political rhetoric. In addition, nearly every interest group in Washington is scrambling to make sure its programs don’t get cut. Those without a voice stand to lose the most from this argument.

Until now a voice that has been absent from the conversation was that of students. Americans in college now and the rest of the Millennial Generation stand to inherit a growing $14 trillion debt, trillions more in unfunded entitlement programs, bleak job prospects and a lower standard of living than their parents.

What started as conversation between three Georgetown students on a bus about the gridlock in Washington over the debt ceiling quickly turned into a small team working to make their voice heard. They came up with an idea and one question for our leaders: “Do We Have A Deal Yet?”    

The idea was simple. Write a letter to the president and leaders in Congress urging them to not only raise the debt ceiling but take this opportunity to enact bold, balanced and bipartisan deficit reduction. A plan that would...

The biggest sticking point in the debt-limit talks has been the disagreement over tax policy. President Obama has been encouraged by his fiscal commission to insist that higher revenues be part of any major deficit-reduction deal -- and to recommend that much of the revenue increase should come from broadening the tax base by reducing "tax expenditures." Although Republicans are coming around to the idea that tax expenditures are just subsidies run through the tax code, many of their leaders stand firm on the position that revenues as a share of the economy not rise from current policy.

While President Obama and other Democrats want revenue increases, they don’t want any changes that would raise taxes on middle class or lower-income households, arguing that such taxes would be overly burdensome and would harm the economic recovery. Meanwhile, Republicans only want reduced tax expenditures to pay for cuts in marginal tax rates, asserting that they would be the path to stronger economic growth and in turn higher revenues.

So both sides are reluctant to change their tax-cutting ways, and they continue to have their own great expectations for tax cuts. But tax cuts don’t always live up to such expectations,...

A shorter version of this column is featured on CNNMoney.com.

It is often said that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor’s pen. Unfortunately, after more than two years of intense debate about health care costs in Washington, politicians still seem stuck debating who should pay for the pen instead of focusing on how to make the pen less expensive.

Republicans want private insurers to make health care payments along with substantially higher cost-sharing by individuals. Democrats and the President want retirees to continue in a system where the government is the predominant payer.

However, in either vision of the world, the primary decisions driving the costs of medical care will be made based on what the doctor says to a patient in an office visit or laying on a hospital bed. This is destined to be the case for as long as doctors train and build up extraordinary expertise. 

This is why the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), is so important in the effort to control costs. The IPAB will be made up of 15 experts, some suggested by congressional leaders and all confirmed by the Senate, appointed to represent the major...