Conrad's plan

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., isn't taking any chances when it comes to addressing his top priority for his remaining time in office.

The Senate Budget Committee chairman is now in his fifth month of collaboration with the so-called Gang of Six, a bipartisan group of senators he said is the country's "best hope" of developing a comprehensive plan to slash federal deficits by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

"We've made enormous progress," he said. "The group of six is very, very close to reaching an agreement."

But the Gang of Six's work was put on hold last week when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., left Washington to attend to a family health emergency, and Conrad said he's almost ready to move ahead with his own budget plan to make sure the issue is addressed by Congress.

Conrad announced in January that he won't seek re-election to the Senate next year, saying at the time he'd prefer to focus on building up support to significantly address the nation's fiscal crisis rather than gear up for another campaign.

He said Thursday that there's now just a matter of "weeks, not months" to finalize a plan, but getting enough votes for lawmakers to take a tough stance on the fiscal crisis won't be easy.

"Some are still in deep denial on how serious this problem is," he said. "When you're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar you spend, the time for denial is over."

Conrad's budget

Conrad said he likely will introduce his own budget proposal this week in the Senate Budget Committee. His goal is to achieve $4 trillion of deficit savings over 10 years -- the same goal as the Gang of Six proposal, which was based on similar recommendations of tax reforms and spending cuts developed by President Barack Obama's debt commission last year.

But Conrad's proposal takes a different approach in order to more aggressively address the underlying problem, he said.

His blueprint includes more revenues than the other plans, which he said would be achieved through fundamental tax reform to lower expenditures.

The debt commission's plan called for using more than 80 percent of new revenues to lower tax rates, but his proposal instead aims to put half of the money toward reducing deficits.

"I've always believed that at the end of the day you really need as much deficit reduction as you can get because the problem is so large," he said.

He's finalizing plans to move ahead with his own proposal, but Conrad said his work with the Gang of Six is far from over.

"I remain convinced that the best prospect for a bipartisan agreement begins with the group of six," he said. "It's the only place that has spent the time necessary to really bridge differences and is largely based on the fiscal commission plan."

There is bipartisan competition for the Gang of Six -- Vice President Joe Biden is leading a new group of lawmakers to develop a plan to address the country's financial crisis.

But Conrad said his group has spent five months and held "hundreds of hours" of meetings to hone its plan, something he said gives the Gang of Six the best chance of coming up with a proposal that will be able to get enough support in a divided Congress.

"This is not something that can be simply done; it's just too complicated," he said. "I think these other groups are going to have to depend in some significant way on the work product from the fiscal commission and the group of six because it's the only place where the bipartisan work has been done."

The U.S. will reach its debt limit this month, and Congress will have to vote by Aug. 2 to raise the limit or else put the country at risk of default.

Conrad said lawmakers could pass a short-term extension of the debt to buy more time for budget talks, but he said it would be a "serious mistake" to enact a long-term debt extension without including a plan to significantly slash the deficit -- a possibility if lawmakers decide to wait until after the 2012 elections to strike a comprehensive deal.

"It's not going to get any easier. It's going to do nothing but get harder."

Johnson reports on local politics. Reach him at (701) 780-1105; (800) 477-6572, ext. 105; or send e-mail to rjohnson@gfherald.com .