Third Way Perspectives

Archive for September, 2012

The National Football League’s misadventures with replacement referees turned into an all-out debacle this past Monday. A frightfully botched call by stand-in officials stole victory from the Green Bay Packers–on the final play of a nationally televised game. The story led the news–not just the sports.

The officiating fiasco is a crisis for the NFL. But the NFL’s travails also offer critical lessons about how America can compete and win in global markets.

To be sure, the NFL’s regular refs occasionally botch critical calls. But like other professionals–including judges, traffic cops, and food inspectors–NFL referees usually work in the background, expertly enforcing complex and changing rules that make things fairer and safer. Like sanitation workers, however, we quickly know when they’re missing. Read the restwave of momentum was amplified by former Treasury secretaries James Baker and Robert Rubin, who joined a small bipartisan army of retired legislators speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The choice of two ex-Treasury chiefs to lead a charge of fiscal pragmatism is no surprise. As Reagan’s chief of staff, Baker brokered the 1982 deficit reduction deal, which combined tax increases with spending cuts. Rubin directed the National Economic Council when Clinton signed a budget deal in 1993.

These elder statesmen laid out their respective approaches to today’s deficit problem, admittedly much bigger than those they faced while in power. True to their parties, the two have major substantive differences on how to reduce the deficit.

It’s time for the Great Showdown between the Old and New