With the 18 members of the Catfood Commission expected to vote on the Simpson-Bowles draft report on Friday, many of the members are stepping forward to declare their positions. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) come out as a firmly against the proposal, while Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) said he was leaning no. According to Politico: Rep. [...]

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 [...]

Beyond the Deficit Commission’s non-report total cop-out on health care, what disturbs me is what changes they do recommend: embracing the economagic myth that the way to control health care costs is just to make regular people pay even higher co-pays, deductibles, and out of pocket costs. This idea that we can reduce overall health [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Social Security cuts are coming for “virtually every American alive and those yet to be born,” in the words of Eric Kingson, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

And for what? Corporate tax cuts. Every member of this commission, every member of Congress, and President Obama himself must reject these insane ideas. We’re starting an emergency petition to President Obama and his Catfood Commission to take Social Security cuts off the table.

What does AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka think about the recommendations made by the co-chairs of the Catfood Commission? The chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to ‘Drop Dead.’ Especially in these tough economic times, it is unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines for working people, Social Security and [...]

The Fiscal Responsibility Commission has just announced that they will have a press conference in the hall outside of the Dirksen office building on the Hill today at 1pm. Alex Lawson, who conducted the now-famous livestream video interview of Catfood Commission co-chair Alan Simpson, is on his way there.  FDL will be livebroadcasting via Ustream [...]

I was on Morning Joe talking about the White House campaign to silence its critics and set them up as scapegoats for Democratic losses in November. Joe Scarborough asked me why people on the left are upset, and I said it’s because people don’t like it when the President says one thing and does another. [...]

I noticed that earlier this year we were overwhelmed by a wave of anti-deficit grandstanding throughout the Democratic Party while the Catfood Commission was sending up trial balloons about cutting Social Security benefits, raising the retirement age (which is just a sleight-of-hand way of cutting benefits) or cutting the health care benefits for military service [...]