The Hijacked Commission

[mgc1961]

Count me among those who always believed that President Obama made a big mistake when he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — a supposedly bipartisan panel charged with coming up with solutions to the nation’s long-run fiscal problems. It seemed obvious, as soon as the commission’s membership was announced, that “bipartisanship” would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right.

My misgivings increased as we got a better feel for the views of the commission’s co-chairmen. It soon became clear that Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chairman, had a very Republican-sounding small-government agenda. Meanwhile, Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chairman, revealed the kind of honest broker he is by sending an abusive e-mail to the executive director of the National Older Women’s League in which he described Social Security as being “like a milk cow with 310 million tits.”

We’ve known for a long time, then, that nothing good would come from the commission. But on Wednesday, when the co-chairmen released a PowerPoint outlining their proposal, it was even worse than the cynics expected.


Follow Mr. Krugman at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=1&hp

[HillbillyBob]

1. Bowles is skkkum

and Simpson should be in a home for the terminally stupid and selfish.
Rich turds who want to steal what we paid dearly for.

[OHdem10]

2. Put an arch-Conservative and Red State DLCer as Co Chairmen

and you get a Right Wing Proposal favorable to Business
and the Rich while the Middle Class get the shaft.

I wonder if these two ever thought in terms of the
whole country and its well being. If right wing
ideology is good enough for them it should be good
enough for everyone, apparently.

[TBF]

3. Recommend nt