Tax increases and spending cuts both promised by President Obama’s fiscal commission

“The pig has died.”

In such memorable fashion (and no, it wasn’t a reference to “Lord of the Flies”), former Sen. Alan Simpson Tuesday kicked off the U.S. government’s effort to keep itself from drowning in debt.

Simpson’s point was that America is running out of money. Simpson, one of two co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, told the 17 other members that during his career in the Senate, his constituents often told him to “bring home the bacon.”

Tuesday’s meeting began an attempt – which some think is doomed from the start and others see merely as an exercise to justify higher taxes – to take on America’s deficit, debt and runaway entitlement spending.

“This might be the last best hope to right this listing ship of state of ours,” said Simpson, in what was both a warning and a plea.

The meeting was full of grave forecasts of disaster if nothing is done to rein in the national debt approaching $13 trillion, deficits that will add to the debt by around $10 trillion over the next decade, and unfunded entitlement spending commitments that Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, said add up to $66 trillion.

“The longer we delay, the greater the risk of catastrophic economic consequences,” said Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, who gave testimony and answered questions from the commission.

Another panelist who addressed the commission, Urban Institute fellow Rudolph Penner, said “it is difficult to predict exactly when a crisis might hit the United States.”

Penner also said that if the U.S. tries to tax its way out of its current situation, America could become “the highest taxed nation on earth.”

Commission co-chair Erskine Bowles, a former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, said the nation’s debt is a “cancer … that is going to destroy our country from within.”

“It’s as plain as day,” Bowles said. “What is really hard is the solution.”

And therein lies the rub.

Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican and ranking member on the House Budget Committee, led the charge to try and focus the commission on cutting spending and not raising taxes.

“If you look at the math of all of this, spending is the culprit. Mathematically speaking, you literally cannot tax your way out of this problem. I don’t think we should go down that path of trying to tax our way out of this problem,” Ryan said.

Sen. Mike Crapo, Idaho Republican, also said he wanted to focus on spending but allowed some wiggle room for the commission to look at raising taxes.

“A significant portion of the solution will be found on the spending side of the ledger,” he said.

Reischauer made the case flat out for higher taxes.

“To achieve fiscal sustainability we are going to have to accept higher tax burdens than we have enjoyed in the past,” he said.

Bernanke said that “the American people will have to choose among making modifications to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, restraining federal spending on everything else, accepting higher taxes, or some combination thereof.”

Liberal House Democrats Rep. Jan Schakowsky, of Illinois, and Rep. Xavier Becerra, of California, tried to pull the commission’s priorities toward preserving social spending programs.