Bowles-Simpson - A millstone instead of a lifeline

A few months ago Josh Marshall asked why did Barack Obama pick Alan Simpson to co-chair his budget commission?  I am afraid to write the President's  and our political obituary but I fear that Obama chose his and our gravediggers when he picked Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to design his long term budget plan.


What Obama needed was a non-partisan not a centrist-rightist bipartisan budget commission.  He needs two plans: one for economic recovery and the other for long term stability.  The least the SOB's could have done was give him a plan that starts in 2014 and works with the restructuring of his  healthcare plan.


I find myself reaching for desperate, tired nautical metaphors.  Is the Democratic House leadership (a decent enough crew) rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?  Is this a rudderless ship?  Has  the helmsman lost his bearings?    


 HERE is Berkeley economist Brad Delong's take:

The Big Question: What is the best and the worst recommendation from the president's debt commission?

Well, two things tie for the worst thing about the president's deficit-reduction commission.

The first is Barack Obama's decision to take a long-time budget arsonist like Alan Simpson--somebody who never found a budget-busting Republican initiative he could not vote for or a deficit-reducing Democratic initiative he could not vote against--and give him a fire chief's hat. As a result, Alan Simpson's ideas are now not Alan Simpson's ideas but instead the "recommendation[s][ from the president's debt commission."

The second is the capping of federal health spending growth at GDP+1%/year. That means that, adjusting the aging of the population, the government is supposed to spend a smaller share of incomes on health care as each year passes. That would require not just the repeal of the Affordable Care Act but the elimination of Medicare as we know it.

The best idea... is it cutting schools for soldiers' kids? Or is it paying for reductions in the top income tax rate by cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit so that there are once again lots of families in America where a parent works full time and yet the kids are still in poverty? 

Yours,

Brad DeLong

Is the Deficit Commission Serious? | Mother Jones

Half the discretionary budget is military to which the southern-strategy Republicans are ideologically and materially and geographically attached. The Democrats are too cowed by flag-wavers to seriously cut unnecessary defense spending. Cross military cuts off the list. 


Next is cutting Social Security for younger people, cut government salaries, shrink government. That will save money now, help create poverty sooner or later or both. Cutting other people's income  and benefits is the tough, manly thing to do so Erskine Bowles (never trust someone with two last names) and Alan Simpson (never trust a Republican from Wyoming) go there. 

Kevin Drum in Mother Jones (link below) gets it right:


To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn't maintain approximately that ratio shouldn't be considered serious. The Simpson-Bowles plan, conversely, goes into loving detail about cuts to the discretionary budget and Social Security but turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare. That's not serious.

Is the Deficit Commission Serious? | Mother Jones
h/t TPM and Greg Sargent