Watchdog group asks: How are you going to pay for that?

WASHINGTON – Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, likens her group to a stinky skunk that cannot be ignored no matter how hard you try.

The think tank, founded in part by former U.S. Rep. Tim Penny, D-Minn., looks for fixes to the national debt. It badgers politicians, policymakers and voters of every stripe with a simple question:

How are you going to pay for that?

Last week, after final passage of a one-year, $1.1 trillion federal budget and its expected approval by President Obama, MacGuineas sat down with the Star Tribune. The Harvard graduate, who regularly testifies before Congress and whom the Wall Street Journal dubbed the "anti-deficit warrior," discussed her relief at avoiding a government shutdown, like the one that happened in 2013.

But she offered typically pointed criticism for what she sees as the continuing fiscal cowardice of leaders pandering to unsustainable expectations of the people they represent.

Q: How do you view the budget that was passed?

A: We certainly didn't need another government shutdown. But the budget is an illustration of so many things that are wrong — from the fact that it passed two-and-half months after the fiscal year ended to the fact that so many little bombs were buried in it. There were things about derivatives, things about campaign finance reform, things about pensions, none of which were discussed in the thoughtful way you would want them discussed and none of which are the core of what budgeting should be.

A: Our whole organization is focused on how you fix the debt with a comprehensive deal where the debt is no longer growing faster than the economy. In the end, they either didn't put the policy changes in place or when they did put changes in, they didn't pay for them.

Q: How should we get our debt back to a manageable level?

A: Policywise it's not hard. It's politically that it's hard. We need to deal with the aging of the population, health care costs and spiraling interest payments. We're not going to be able to grow the economy enough to fix these problems. There are hard choice to be made on taxes and entitlements. You have politicians unwilling to own up to any of these hard choices.

Q: What's the "come-to-Jesus" moment?

A: In the United States, it's not likely to happen because we're still a safe haven and seen as the strongest economy and political system [in the world]. We can continue to borrow money at very low rates.

A: There are two ways change comes, either from leadership or a crisis. If we strengthen Social Security right now, we can do so in a way that not one person who depends on the system would be worse off. If we wait until the trust funds don't have enough money, then real damage to people who really depend on the program will occur. What you don't want are politicians telling you what they are not going to do. If you don't touch Social Security, don't touch Medicare, don't touch taxes, there's really no way you're going to be able to fix the budget.

Q: How do you see this going forward?

A: Voters are going to have to start demanding actual leadership from politicians, understanding that the policy choices aren't ones they love. Nobody wants to call for higher taxes and lower spending. But we have to be honest that anything other than that is asking our children to pay for what we're not willing to.