Our proposal contains concrete steps to reduce the growth of entitlement programs and make structural changes to federal health programs, such as reforming the health-care delivery system to move away from the fee-for-service model and gradually increasing the eligibility age for Medicare. At the same time, it would provide important protections and benefit enhancements for low-income and vulnerable Americans, such as an income-related Medicare buy-in for seniors affected by the increase in Medicare’s eligibility age and greater protections against catastrophic health-care costs for low-income seniors.

Our proposal recognizes that additional revenue must be part of a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan for both substantive and political reasons. Our plan raises revenue through comprehensive tax reform that lowers rates, improves fairness and promotes more vibrant economic growth.

These structural reforms are accompanied by spending cuts in all parts of the budgets put forward by both parties, including cuts to defense and non-defense programs. The plan also includes a shift to the chained consumer price indexto provide more accurate indexation of provisions throughout the budget, with a portion of the savings devoted to benefit enhancements for low-income populations. Together, these policies would put the debt on a downward trajectory as a share of gross domestic product — and would keep it declining for the long term.