The dynamic duo of deficit hysteria are at it again. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles have put out yet another deficit reduction proposal calling for $2.5 trillion in reductions. Not surprisingly their plan includes cutting Medicaid, raising the Medicare retirement age, adopting the Chained-CPI for Social Security, and cutting military pensions. This is effectively Simpson [...]

Just in case you were worried that Washington might have accidentally stopped talking about Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson, or the deficit for a whole day the dynamic duo is trying to grab the spotlight today with a brand new deficit outline. Not surprisingly much of their proposed deficit reduction would come from cutting Medicare and [...]

Simpson seems to think he’s inspiring a new austerity generation when he tells them to “Get in there before all the old coots clean out the Treasury and leave you with nothing.” Apparently he doesn’t understand that the dance is a parody of poseur rich kids like himself who have nothing better to do than act outrageously and call attention to themselves.

Tell AARP:Hands Off Social Security Sign our letter telling AARP that we will fight any attempts to make cuts to Social Security. » Read the whole letter The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the AARP has officially reversed its course and will be no longer working to protect Social Security. In a direct [...]

Alan Simpson doesn’t like “the Catfood Commission people.” In a testy interview with Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim, the chair of Obama’s deficit commission questioned Grim’s stated facts about Social Security, speculating that Grim’s information came from “the Catfood Commission people.”

Today, President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission failed to secure a sufficient votes from its members, so it didn’t release on official report. The chance that it would have even reached the required 14-vote minimum was remote for a variety of reasons. For example: Selecting Alan Simpson, a cranky old jerk who loves to fight, as [...]

After fully studying the deficit reduction proposal put forward by Catfood Commission co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles (PDF), I realized that I could write a 55-world proposal that would do a substantially better job of reducing the federal debt. I’m calling the “Super Awesome Deficit Plan” and here it is: Starting in 2016, to [...]

When I examine any “plan” to reduce the national debt I always go straight to the section on health care, and not just because I’m an expert on health care reform. As you can clearly see from this graph from the CBO, our long-term deficit problem is almost exclusively a health care cost problem. Any [...]

I don’t feel like going point by point through the recommendations put forward by President Obama’s deficit commission appointees Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, mainly because their real goal is to advance conservative ideology; they are a wish-list of horrific, anti-middle class proposals supported by only two men with no real political power. But I [...]

To understand how ridiculous the “serious” people are in Washington, and how broken our political debate is, let me draw your attention to the three biggest political stories of the day. Together, they make the clear case that all this so-called concern about the “deficit” is simply a justification the powerful use to attack the [...]