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The Simpson-Bowles Plan was a 2010 proposal to reduce federal deficits through a mix of spending cuts, tax reform, Social Security changes, health-care savings, and budget rules. It won 11 votes on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform—three short of the 14 needed for formal approval—and Congress did not enact it as a package. Its ambitious savings and debt targets were projections, not results.
What was the Simpson-Bowles Plan?
“Simpson-Bowles” is the common name for recommendations issued by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, co-chaired by former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson. The commission’s December 2010 report, The Moment of Truth, laid out a broad approach to the federal budget rather than a single, fully drafted bill.
President Barack Obama established the 18-member commission through Executive Order 13531 on February 18, 2010. Its assignment included improving the medium-term fiscal outlook and putting federal finances on a sustainable long-run path. The order called for 14 of the 18 members to approve a final report.
How did the plan arise, and did it pass?
The commission released The Moment of Truth on December 1, 2010, then voted on it two days later. The tally was 11–7 in favor, below the 14-vote threshold. It is therefore more accurate to call Simpson-Bowles a commission proposal or majority report than a formally approved commission report. It was not enacted as a package of federal law.
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President Obama said on December 3 that he and his economic team would study proposals in the majority report as they developed the next budget and priorities. That response did not constitute adoption of the plan. The archived statement records his contemporaneous reaction.
What did Simpson-Bowles propose?
The proposal combined spending reductions and revenue increases, alongside changes to Social Security, health care, and the budget process. In its summary of the plan for FY2012–FY2020, the Congressional Research Service attributed about 69% of deficit reduction, excluding interest savings, to spending cuts and the remainder to revenue increases.
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Spending and health care
- Discretionary spending: Set caps and apply equal percentage reductions to security and non-security spending.
- Health care and other mandatory programs: Seek cost containment in health care and make changes to other mandatory spending, including agricultural programs.
- Retirement programs: Reform civilian and military retirement benefits.
Tax reform
The report aimed to lower statutory tax rates while broadening the tax base and reducing tax expenditures—special exclusions, deductions, and other provisions that reduce taxable income or tax liability. One illustrative design used individual income tax brackets of 12%, 22%, and 28%, and a 28% corporate rate. These were part of a set of tax options, not one fully specified tax bill that Congress considered and enacted.
The proposal also called for a 15-cent-per-gallon increase in the gasoline excise tax, phased in from 2013 through 2022. That was a proposed change, not an increase that took effect under the plan.
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Social Security
The Social Security recommendations included gradually increasing the taxable wage base so that it covered 90% of earnings by 2050, and raising the full and early retirement ages to 69 and 64, respectively, by 2075. The plan also proposed covering newly hired state and local government workers after 2020 and providing a hardship exemption for people unable to work past age 62.
Budget rules
Budget-process ideas included a debt-stabilization process and using chained CPI for cost-of-living adjustments where applicable. These measures were intended to help constrain projected spending growth; they were proposals, not adopted rules from the commission’s report.
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What were its fiscal targets?
The report set out a path with large projected savings over time. CRS summarized the headline goals as follows:
| Measure | Plan figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Combined deficit reduction | $4 trillion, FY2012–FY2020 | A projected reduction over that period, not savings subsequently achieved by the plan. |
| Federal deficit | 2.3% of GDP by FY2015 | A target for the deficit as a share of the economy. |
| Federal revenue | Capped at 21% of GDP | A revenue target, not a tax rate for an individual or business. |
| Federal debt | 60% of GDP by FY2023; 40% by FY2035 | Debt-to-GDP targets in the proposal, not observed outcomes. |
These numbers describe goals and estimates in the plan as summarized by the Congressional Research Service (2011). They should not be read as a record of what happened after enactment: the proposal was not enacted as a package.
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Would the Simpson-Bowles Plan have worked?
It offered a comprehensive route to lower projected deficits, but no one can observe the full effect of a package that was not implemented. The answer depends on whether the provisions had been enacted, how quickly they took effect, what happened to the economy, and—crucially—which fiscal baseline is used for comparison.
CRS reports that the commission used a “Plausible” baseline resembling an extension of current policy. Compared with current law, however, the plan would increase the deficit through FY2014 and the debt-to-GDP ratio through FY2018, before reducing both relative to current law beyond those points. A claim that the plan reduced deficits “from the start” would therefore obscure the baseline and time horizon.
The commission argued that immediate, steep consolidation could damage a fragile recovery. Its report recommended waiting until 2012 to begin programmatic spending cuts and until 2013 to begin revenue changes, while emphasizing growth-promoting investment and tax reform. That was the commission’s rationale for phasing in changes, not proof of the economic effects they would have produced. The report’s own formulation was: “A plan to reduce the deficit must therefore promote economic growth and not undermine the economic recovery.”
Whether the package was politically achievable is a separate question from whether its budget projections penciled out. The 11–7 vote, short of the commission’s supermajority threshold, underscored the political difficulty of assembling support for a package with consequential changes to taxes, spending, and Social Security.
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Simpson-Bowles is best understood as a detailed, historically important 2010 blueprint—not as current law, a completed reform, or a forecast that can be checked against the results of implementation. Its fiscal targets were conditional estimates, and its near-term effect looks different depending on whether the comparison is with current law or the commission’s current-policy-like “Plausible” baseline. For readers evaluating later deficit proposals, the useful questions are what policy changes they include, when they take effect, and what baseline underlies their projected savings.
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