A bipartisan group of lawmakers is raising the alarm about the rapidly rising national debt, saying that a divided government may be the perfect opportunity to make substantive changes to America’s profligate spending. This comes as Speaker Johnson is pushing for the establishment of a fiscal commission aimed at creating long-term solutions. 

Four lawmakers — Senator Romney, Senator Manchin, Congressman Scott Peters, and Congressman Bill Huizenga — recently wrote in an opinion piece for the Hill that the national debt represents “the greatest threat” America currently faces.

“In just 10 years, the national debt has more than doubled,” the four men — two Republicans and two Democrats — write. “Not only is this level of debt unsustainable, but it is growing at the largest rate seen in the history of this country.”

They say there is plenty of blame to go around, with Democrats pursuing unsustainably high spending levels and Republicans enacting tax cuts that make it impossible to close the annual budget deficit, let alone solve the debt problem. 

The rate at which the debt has grown is staggering — more than doubling in just ten years. “Interest payments on the debt totaled $659 billion in the last fiscal year, making it the fourth largest expenditure in the budget,” they write. “In the next few years, interest payments are on pace to exceed both defense and non-defense discretionary spending, which includes education, transportation and more. And if we continue at this rate of fiscal imbalance, in the not so distant future, interest payments will be our largest expenditure.”

Seeing divided government as an opportunity for bipartisanship and reform, congressional leaders have already taken the first step in creating a long-term solution for the crisis. The four lawmakers introduced legislation in their respective chambers last year that would establish a debt commission to craft legislation bringing down the debt. 

The Fiscal Stability Act — which passed through a key committee in the House on Thursday — would establish a 16-member commission made up of 12 congressional legislators and four outside experts. The House speaker and minority leader and the Senate majority and minority leaders would each appoint three of their own chamber colleagues, as well as one fiscal expert of their choosing. 

The commission would then provide a report and a legislative package no later than May 1, 2025, which would then be voted on by both Houses of Congress. The legislative package would offer solutions on how to “improve the long-term fiscal condition of the Federal Government, stabilize the ratio of public debt to GDP within a 15-year period, and improve solvency of Federal trust funds over a 75-year period,” according to a bill summary provided by Mr. Romney’s office. 

Some are not as optimistic, however. A retired congressman and former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Jeb Hensarling, says Congress has tried these kinds of commissions before to no avail. Entitlement programs, Mr. Hensarling says, remain the third rail that no politician seeking reelection will touch. 

“The failures of the Simpson-Bowles commission of 2010 and the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction of 2011 (known as the Super Committee) demonstrate that no debt commission can succeed without reforming entitlement spending,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “This isn’t a great environment for a new fiscal commission, which would likely face a picked-over landscape of repetitive and increasingly nebulous cuts to the roughly 16 percent of the federal budget containing domestic discretionary spending.”

Not only has Congress and its past debt commissions and fiscal committees failed, but lawmakers seem perpetually willing to let the problem snowball until it becomes a front-of-mind crisis. 

In the last few days, Congress approved a short-term funding agreement known as a continuing resolution without a single budget cut because Mr. Johnson cannot get conservatives to sign on to the more modest budget agreement he made with Senator Schumer. 

By the end of January, both chambers are also expected to approve a massive tax cut for families, children, and businesses that could decrease federal revenues by more than $500 billion over the next decade if the legislation is made permanent and more offsets are not included in the bill.