“It’s so bad out there that there’s a question as to whether Washington can govern anymore,” Ms. MacGuineas said, sitting in the Capitol after briefing a group of legislators. “We want a deal to happen, and want it to happen in a bipartisan way, because otherwise it’s not going to stick.”
Ms. MacGuineas, a budget expert who has advised Republican and Democratic lawmakers, is the face of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a nonpartisan phalanx of chief executives, politicians and economic experts with $43 million to spend on efforts to pressure lawmakers to broker a deal.
A wisecracking, self-deprecating, third-generation Washingtonian, Ms. MacGuineas has spent years issuing forceful warnings about threats to the solvency of Social Security and to the pristine bond rating of American debt, often using Washington dinner parties as her soap box.
“For some reason, in Washington, you can’t talk about the budget except over food,” quipped Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, who is a part of the Fix the Debt campaign.
Ms. MacGuineas has worked in politics, advising Senator John McCain of Arizona on Social Security during his 2000 campaign for the presidency. But she describes herself as a political independent and has spent most of her career at Washington’s nonpartisan research houses, including Brookings, the New America Foundation and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
“For the longest time, nobody cared, nobody listened,” she said. “It was 15 years of irrelevancy.”
Two years ago, things changed. With the country adding more than a trillion dollars a year to its debt, more members of Congress became interested in budget data and advice, Ms. MacGuineas said. Corporate leaders and the American public also began tuning in to the looming debt problem.
The Campaign to Fix the Debt started to come together at a salon dinner held in the backyard of Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, in the fall of 2011. An influential group of economic, political and business leaders — including the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Mark Bertolini, the chief executive of the Aetna insurance company — huddled in a too-small tent in the pouring rain.
Maybe it was the fact that the 60 guests were mashed together, Mr. Warner said. Maybe it was the generous pours of wine. But the dinner took on the impassioned feeling of a “tent revival,” he said.
“It was Democrats and Republicans, members of the House and Senate, saying, ‘I’m ready to do what it takes,’ ” Mr. Warner said. Indra Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo, at one point announced that America needed to “get its swagger back.”
After the dinner, Ms. MacGuineas felt primed for action and set out to raise $3 million for a nonpartisan campaign to push Congress to get a deal done, once and for all. She has ended up with 14 times that amount and is now helping to run the campaign — which is intended to fold in a year or two, if Congress makes progress — out of space in the New America Foundation’s offices.
She also ended up with an all-star cast. Erskine B. Bowles and Alan K. Simpson, who led the president’s debt commission, are cited as co-founders. The chief executives of JPMorgan, BlackRock, Boeing, Cisco, Honeywell, General Electric and other companies have signed on.
In recent months, Fix the Debt has pressed White House officials and members of Congress in face-to-face meetings. Its policy team has responded to questions from reporters and legislative staffs. It has opened 17 state-level operations and undertaken a public-relations campaign, including national television advertisements.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/business/campaign-to-fix-the-debt-gains-steam-after-years-in-the-making.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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