A crisis leaves no time to build solutions from scratch.
If bond markets lose confidence in U.S. fiscal policy, Congress and the White House will not have months to design a careful response. They will reach for existing proposals that are already credible, understood, and ready to move.
Recover Stronger: A Debt Crisis Playbook for Policymakers lays out what Congress and the White House should do, and in what order, if rising borrowing costs, weak Treasury auctions, or other market stresses spiral from today’s heightened vulnerability into a fiscal confidence crisis.
Policymakers will have to find substantial savings, but this report does not prescribe the spending and revenue mix. Leaders must first drive an immediate, bipartisan down payment on deficit reduction. Then committees should take increasing responsibility for developing durable policies to meet budget goals and other priorities. Crisis-driven savings alone are not enough.
That is because the dysfunction is systemic and requires institutional solutions. Federal debt downgrades reflect three related weaknesses: persistent deficits, a rising debt burden, and poor fiscal governance. A credible response must address all three.
Recover Stronger organizes that response around three tasks:
- Set targets. Give markets and the public a simple destination: reduce deficits below 3% of GDP, backed by a workable glide path to structural primary balance and a declining debt burden.
- Fix the process. After the initial response, policymaking should shift toward member-driven coalition building through the committees.
- Replace breakdown points. Shutdowns and default threats have no place in responsible governance. Better rules can preserve pressure on Congress to act without making the public bear the costs of congressional failure.
Merely surviving a debt crisis is not enough. Congress must emerge with better tools to support responsible choices every year.
Congress should upgrade itself before bond markets force the issue. But if a crisis comes first, policymakers should not have to invent the response overnight.
The tools already exist. Recover Stronger shows how to put them to work.
PDF of Recover Stronger: A Debt Crisis Playbook for Policymakers
