The commission did not formally vote because while 11 of 18 members backed the plan, that was short of the 14-vote supermajority required to send the plan to Congress for action under the terms of Mr. Obama?s executive order last February establishing the commission. Even so, panel members of both parties, and opponents of the plan as well as supporters, said as they expressed their views that the package should serve as ?a template? for future action, in the words of Representative Xavier Becerra, a Democratic opponent from California.
?This plan deserves a vote and this president needs to make sure that by the State of the Union he also has his own plan and his own leadership because this is the issue of our time that must be solved,? said one of those who voted against the package, Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union who was a major supporter of Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Mr. Obama issued a statement supportive of the committee?s report without embracing any of its specific recommendations for spending cuts or tax increases. While he said his immediate goal is creating more jobs ? a nod to the rise in the unemployment rate announced Friday morning and the political pressure that sustained high levels of joblessness has put on him - he hinted that he might use some components of the plan as the basis for his own proposals to address the nation?s long-term fiscal imbalances.
?The commission?s majority report includes a number of specific proposals that I ? along with my economic team ? will study closely in the coming weeks as we develop our budget and our priorities for the coming year,? Mr. Obama said in a statement distributed by the White House as the president met with troops in Afghanistan.
?I don?t doubt our ability to meet this challenge, but our success depends on our willingness to engage in the kind of honest conversation and cooperation that hasn?t always happened in Washington,? Mr. Obama said. ?We cannot afford to fall back on old ideologies, and we will all have to budge on long-held positions. So I ask members of both parties to maintain an open mind and a commitment to progress as we work to lift this burden from the shoulders of future generations.?
The committee?s deliberations and the reactions to its proposals highlighted deep splits in Washington and the nation over how urgent the fiscal problem is, how it should be balanced against the economy?s more immediate needs and how it should be addressed.
The plan written by Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson ? representing the view that chronic deficits and the mounting debt must be dealt with aggressively ? would make deep cuts, mostly starting in 2012 given the economy?s fragility, in both domestic and military spending. It would overhaul the tax code, eliminating or reducing the $1 trillion a year in popular tax breaks for individuals and corporations and using the revenues mostly to slash income tax rates but also to reduce deficits. And to make Social Security solvent for 75 years, it would raise payroll taxes for the affluent and reduce future benefits, including by slowly raising the retirement age for full benefits to 69 from 67 by 2075.
Administration at work on Mr. Obama?s State of the Union address and annual budget release in January said there is interest in borrowing the commission?s calls for overhauling the tax code and fixing Social Security?s long-term finances.
Several Republicans also expressed a desire to see the plan serve as the basis for debate soon, especially on overhauling taxes. Senator Michael D. Crapo, a Republican of Idaho, called for ?immediate and aggressive action.?
Mr. Stern, the former labor leader, was the only one of the six private citizens whom Mr. Obama named to the panel to vote against the plan, citing its failure to invest in such areas as education and infrastructure even as it cut spending elsewhere. As the week began, people close to the commission privately predicted that few of the 12 elected officials on the panel would vote yes, reflecting the hesitance among lawmakers who must face the voters to compromise ? Republicans on taxes in particular and Democrats on domestic spending.
But in the end, after days of private one-on-one conversations by the chairmen ? Erskine B. Bowles, the president of the North Carolina University system and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican Senate leader of Wyoming ? and revisions to the package?s mix of spending cuts and revenue increases, six of the 12 elected officials on the commission supported the chairmen?s recommendations. Two senior lawmakers on Congress?s budget committees are retiring, however, taking them out of the mix for any future legislative action.
Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the chairman of the House Budget Committee who lost his reelection bid in November, joked that as he struggled to decide to vote yes, ?I thought frequently, thank God I?m not running again.?
Turning serious, Mr. Spratt said it was ?an irony? that the commission was proposing such far-reaching and painful remedies for the coming decade when the White House and Congressional leaders simultaneously on Friday were negotiating how long to extend the soon-to-expire Bush-era tax cuts. As Mr. Spratt noted, an extension for the rates for all income levels would cost more than $4 trillion over the coming decade ? slightly more than the amount that the commission plan would cut from the deficits projected in that time.
The 11 supporters were split between the parties, with five Democrats and five Republicans, along with a political independent, Ann M. Fudge, the former chief executive of Young & Rubicam.