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 [...]

Many politicians distort the truth for their benefit but Mitt Romney is rather unique in that he often makes statements that can so quickly and easily be proven false. The latest example resulted in Romney receiving the smack down from Erskine Bowles. From Bowles in the Washington Post: This month, Romney said that his tax [...]

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 [...]

The Hill has an article today talking about how much Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (WI) and Sen. Judd Gregg (NH) love what the Catfood Commission has been secretly scheming about. The fact that these two radicals admire what is happening in these private meetings is terrifying. But the article does contain an important detail about [...]

There’s a very important an article in the Neiman Watchdog this morning (Harvard’s journalism review, Deputy Editor Dan Froomkin). It’s written by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, entitled “Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’? Headlines like that are normally the reserve of DFH bloggers, so it’s notable that the academic world is talking [...]

After Steven Gillon’s book salon on FDL the other day, I went back and listened to what Bill Clinton had to say about his efforts to reform Social Security at the Pete Peterson confab last month: CLINTON: The reason we didn’t get Social Security reform is because the Chairman of Ways & Means Committee, Bill [...]