Bowles calls for leaders to settle differences in TV ad

by Rob Christensen, Under the Dome, October 14, 2013.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson will be featured in a national TV ad campaign that pushes for an end to the impasse in Washington.

The Campaign to Fix the Debt ad begins Tuesday, and in it Bowles and Simpson urge lawmakers to pass a budget and deal with the debt ceiling. Simpson is a former Republican senator, while Bowles, a Democrat, is a former president of the University of North Carolina and a two-time Senate candidate.

“The American people are fed up with what’s going on in Washington,” Simpson says. “The national debt is a threat to jobs and our economic future yet we continue on our course of inaction.”

“It’s going to take real political courage for folks to begin working together to confront the long-term fiscal problems facing the country,” adds Bowles, who was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. “Now is the time to tell Washington it’s long past time to fix the debt.”

Bowles and Simpson co-chaired a national commission in 2010 that recommended a series of measures aimed at reducing the national debt.

The Fix the Debt campaign is mainly financed by businesses.