Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz once signaled support for a controversial deficit reduction plan that would have cut entitlement programs and raised taxes across the board, a review of Walz’s record as a House lawmaker shows.
The Minnesota governor, who served in the House from 2007 through 2018, during those years often touted his commitment to fiscal discipline. He backed the 2010 recommendations of a bipartisan panel panned by critics on the left as the “Catfood Commission” — ostensibly because its $4 trillion worth of deficit-reducing plans would leave the poor and elderly to subsist on cat food.
Led by former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, the commission proposed gradually raising the Social Security retirement age and curbing Medicare and Medicaid payments, federal pensions, defense spending and more. It included a broad-based tax overhaul that would have lowered tax rates but eliminated enough deductions and credits to result in households of all incomes paying more, though the richest would have been hit hardest.
