Judd Gregg: “The key difficulty facing the Congress now, I think, is to legislate or in other ways lock in future deficit reduction.”

Design the programs. Decide how large the government is going to be. Do a tax reform to finance it.

I think Dr. Rivlin is absolutely correct on both points, and Simpson-Bowles did the same thing that Domenici-Rivlin did, which was to actually increase benefits to single women over 85, and low-income individuals.

We cannot continue to let health care costs rise faster than our National income.

I think the appropriate way to approach this is to set the size of the government as a percent of GDP.