The Friday morning general session of TD Ameritrade's national conference in San Diego featured a conversation with former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. Simpson and Bowles were both selected by Vice President Joseph Biden, on behalf of the White House, to serve as co-chairs of the president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
As is Simpson's style, straight talk and folksy wit punctuated his comments.
When discussing congressional earmarks, moderator Skip Schweiss asked both men about the probability that elected officials would lead by example on deficit reduction.
"We have a $1.5 trillion annual problem with the debt," Simpson responded. "Earmarks account for about $16 billion of that amount. It's the equivalent of a sparrow's belch in a cyclone."
Nonetheless, both men advocated for earmark reform, which made it into the report's final draft.
The discussion then turned to Social Security, which both Simpson and Bowles said should not be a political issue, but rather a math issue. They noted as the law now reads, if nothing is done to reform the system, by 2037 benefits will be reduced by 22%.
Schweiss noted that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has previously stated that reform will not happen "on the backs of American workers," and the president himself said in his State of the Union speech that Social Security will not be a priority for his administration.
"He's the head of your party, you answer that one," Simpson said, turning to Bowles to general laughter from the audience.
Later in the question and answer session, Simpson added that Social Security is one of the easiest problems to fix.
"It's a math problem," he said. "All it will take is the guts to solve it."
