OK, here’s the draft document for the cat food commission co-chair’s mark. In addition, there’s a page with specific “illustrative cuts”, $100 billion in domestic spending and $100 billion in military spending. Between the two, you can get a sense of what Bowles and Simpson have planned. Keep in mind that this is more of a shock doctrine document than a blueprint; they have no support on the commission for all this, and they’re trying to gather it with this early release.
So let’s bullet point some highlights:
• They’re nice enough to wait a whole year to implement the cuts; they wouldn’t start until FY 2012 – in other words, the next budget.
• Their goal is to put revenue and spending at 21-22% of GDP. Their plan would reduce the deficit below the recommended 3% of GDP by 2015, down to about 2.2%.
• They put in spending caps, maybe the worst idea known to man, the kind of program that has turned Colorado so sharply negative that the business community begged the state to lift them. These caps, which are unenforceable, as a current Congress cannot be bound by a previous Congress, would bush spending 18% below the baseline by 2020, a drastic bit of austerity.
• 75% of the solutions in the co-chair mark are spending reductions, 25% are tax increases.
• They want to add co-pays to the Veterans’ Administration and TRICARE, as well as pushing individuals covered by TRICARE into an employer policy. They also want to freeze noncombat military pay for three years. And, they want to end schools for families on military bases, instead reintegrating soldier’s kids into the public school system (because that’s so easy for a military family that moves every other year).
• They would cut the federal workforce by 10%, freeze all salary increases and bonuses for three years, and reduce Congressional and White House budgets by 15%. Surely this is the way to a better and more efficient federal workforce.
• They would eliminate all funding for commercial space flight, as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and increase fees at national parks and the Smithsonian museums.
• Increase co-pays in Medicaid and cost sharing in Medicare. In addition, the plan would cap Medicaid/Medicare growth, so that the government would have to either increase premiums and co-pays or raise the Medicare eligibility age if the cost grows above the baseline.
• Massively overhaul the tax code. They have a couple different options on this. In the first, there would only be three brackets: at 8%, 14% and 23% for the top bracket. All tax expenditures – $1.1 trillion, including the Earned Income Tax Credit and the child tax credit, would be eliminated. The corporate tax rate would go down from 35% to 26% as well. Option 2 borrows from the Wyden-Gregg tax reform, establishing rates at 15%, 25% and 35%, increasing the standard deduction, capping the mortgage interest deduction (and eliminating it for second homes), limiting the charitable deduction, eliminating other tax expenditures, and capping the employer deduction for health care. Corporate rates would also go down, with loopholes removed.
• They would increase the gas tax by 15 cents a gallon beginning in 2013, to pay for transportation projects.
• They would pay for the “doctor’s fix” by cutting other reimbursements to hospitals and drug companies, as well as through tort reform (yeah, that’ll do it). They would also speed up a lot of the cost controls in the health care law. They also ask, if health care costs are still rising after the implementation of the exchanges, for Congress to consider a variety of options, including this:
Add a robust public option and/or all-payer system in the exchange
• Reduce farm subsidies by $3 billion per year.
• On Social Security, gradually increase the retirement age to 69 by 2075. They would also institute progressive price indexing to cut scheduled benefits for middle and high-income earners. They would index cost of living increases to inflation and not wages. They would also increase the payroll tax to capture 90% of wages, rather than the current 86%. Social Security savings would stay inside the program to keep it solvent, not be used for deficit reduction.
There’s a lot more in there, but those are the highlights. It’s a very aggressive plan.
UPDATE: More from The New York Times.




80 Comments

Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
“They would eliminate all funding for commercial space flight, as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,”
hahahaha so ass kissing dosent pay off.
Well, they answered one question with a resounding, “Yes, we’ve lost our fucking minds.”
It’s a ludicrous laundry list guaranteed to make the Commission irrelevant.
Tremolux are you into Fender amps?
Gulp…Yup.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the MSM cheerleading squad treats this story.
This appears to be a very important document. If we just do exactly the opposite of what it recommends, we should be OK.
Within the “massively overhaul the tax code bullet point “option one” certainly seems like out-of thier-fucking-imperialist-minds option. Keep an eye on “tax reform” measures.A corporate tax cut would sure help, and they SO deserve one.
What would be more interesting is a list of things they — Simpleton and Blowes — ruled out.
That seems true about just about anything anymore. It seems that instead of doing what the “shadow government” wants we should have an anti-shadow government that actually sets policy.
Increase the SS retirement age to 69- you can hardly get a job if you are 56 years old now!
The members of the Commission are all independently wealthy and they can choose to work or not on these thorny issues of “community”. Whose playing class warfare?
CATATONIC CAT LITTER CONTENTS, Suitable only for CATSINJAMMING back down the CATFOOD Commissars’ throats; then, swinging their comatose carcasses overhead around midnight into the cemetery to Cure WARTS (only such homeopathic remedies are affordable since our health care’s already been DEFORMED, Both at the Behest of Precedent OBAMEH)!
I am. I had a vintage Vibrasonic for years and now use a Twin. I used to be all Gibson but these days I prefer a Strat for most stuff.
Still wish my ex hadn’t sold my Gibson ES175 and Melody Maker. I had stained the latter with tung oil varnish and used it for Hendrix-y stuff. Loved that Bigsby! The former came with the Vibrasonic as a birthday present from Dad in my Freshman year in high school (or was it the next year?) after I informed him my crummy Knox guitar and its matching amplifier were likely going to get me beat up for suckage.
Funny how the whole “Support The Troops!” meme gets lost once you become a plain old citizen again.
Apparently editing time has been reduced to 2 nano sconds: please edit whose to who is from above post.
Fuck’m.
So what’s our idiot president have to say about all this?
Well, I typed years ago, that with the possible exception of WWII vets, they have always been treated badly. So nothing new there. I believe the more accurate word for ‘troops’ is cannon fodder, no?
Oh, that was so yesterday. It’s now actually set to the frequency of a wavelength precisely as long as the Planck constant. You’ve overestimated the available time by a factor of a billion billion billions.
It seems obvious that these assholes had the “start high and come down” strategy in mind. This piece of shit is so egregious, however, that they might just have shot themselves in the foot. One can hope, anyway…
I agree that raising the age of retirement is not realistic. Longevity is bi-modal for low income and high income groups,….. with early retirement needed for low earners. It is a matter of social justice. We live in an unequal society and a person with low income has a harder life and will not live as long as someone who has had a high income life and lifestyle.
I can cite a source to prove this to you but I will have to leave the thread and come back to it with the link.
Yes, I used to have a ’64 Tremolux Blackface piggy-back back in 1964. Sadly, I sold it in a moment of weakness in the late 60s. I currently have a Blues Junior; a nice little amp. If you have a ’59 Bassman you don’t need, I’ll take it off your hands.
Wouldn’t it make much more sense just to let the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250K expire? Too obvious?
If you raised the retirement age right now to seventy you would increase the gap between the length of retirement for high earners and the length of retirement for low earners to ten years:
Poor people and even so called middle class people do not live as long as wealthier people do:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/br301010.html
My question: How does a deficit commission, trying to eliminate yearly deficits, come up with plans for *tax cuts for corporations and the rich?*
That’s some audacity that even I didn’t expect. As far as I’m concerned, these people are traitors to the human race. They should be ashamed.
The year was 1959. The story was that robots were going to free man from the necessity for work. With everything provided by robots, man would have no need for income; he would be free to do whatever he dreamed of. Leisure time was going to increase dramatically. Into the 60′s the story grew into a fable of fantastic cities with flying cars and peaceful, happy people everywhere.
“Better living through chemistry.”
“Rayon! The miracle fiber!”
Blah, blah, blah.
So, here we are. It’s 50 years later and what have we done? We have robots putting man out of work – work he’s still expected to find in order to pay his bills, eat, clothe himself and his family and support his government. We have manufacturers racing out of the country to find cheap labor overseas. We have massive unemployment and rising poverty. Millions are losing their homes. Millions more can’t find work anywhere they look.
But we’re going to balance the budget and pay for international financial fraud, carry on multiple wars and finance the reconstruction and universal health care for foreigners on the backs of the poor, the elderly and the sick?
NAZIS!!!!!!!
Nah, just traitors to America. The rest of the world is saf.. oh shit, wait, that whole global economy thing. CURSE YOU RAYGUN!!!
Tragically, it looks like they will take a large chunk of the 12.3 percent they do not already own before the other 280 million accept that it will require the literal risk of loss of life or limb to push them back, at all.
The indoctrination and the purchased power behind it is so overwhelming at this point that there is little chance of a political solution to the dominance of wealth. Events are progressing towards where they always do when the wealthiest unwisely take it all, just because they can.
From time to time, they have to be reminded to fear the rest of us. It is too late to reign them in through the ballot box.
Can you find the obvious VAT tax?
We would not want to burden those corporations which don’t pay any significant taxes to begin with so we will propose a Value Added Tax for Ryan to pay once a week, especially if he drives a car and has a commute to work./s
Can you guess the VAT tax?/s
Hint: Maya MacGuineas calls it a ‘carbon tax’./s
Time to fucking call it like it is, eh? We saw this in Germany less than 80 years ago. Funny how memory fades when it’s convenient for those in power.
Maybe it’s time to throw a French history book at these idiots.
WIRED is reporting some of the proposed DoD cuts
of course, I’m sure they are just bargaining chits and wonder what the WH will give up to get these particular cuts
He’s (convienently) out of the country right now.
Man, Obama stepped in it this time. This is HIS commission. Even Congress didn’t want this commission. They rejeced its formation. But Mr. Bipartisan went over their heads and appointed one anyway, loaded with anti-Social Security people.
‘cuse me Honey. Fuck Raygun, Bill Clinton created the space for Dems to do this shite
They keep bringing it and we keep taking it! So where and when do we show up! I think I heard that the pen is mightier than the sword but I keep thinking they have both!
I blame Al Gore. He invented the internet.
It’s bipartisan, therefore that means it is good.
Isn’t it wonderful when ‘both sides’ can come together and serve their billionaire overlords in a responsible and meaningful way? We have found peace in our time!
Unless you’re one of those pesky Muslims. Then, NO peace for you. /Soup Nazi.
I think it’s time we stop calling this shit bipartisan and start calling it facist.
get your POP CORN ready
old Ed Schultz is going to come out screaming about this catfood commission and how they hate the middle class! He is going to shoot for an OSCAR.
when all the dust settles old Ed Schultz is going to cry, about how the left should help Obama do the tough stuff, like kill the middle class.
this is going to be super KABUKI THEATRE
Thanks Tom as one that has worked in the trades all of my life believe me 55 might sound young but your body has had it. I’m 62 and took good care of myself but still feel the pain of different trades I’ve worked. HOw about lower the age to 55 and double what you collect then I would have some extra cash to spend and some one young would have a job. Oh and stop all wars and close 900 basesaround the world.
Help!! My friends and I had an informal competition as to which of these stellar high-minded cuts the Cat Fooders would propose. Alas, they proposed them all. We hadn’t counted on a total slate.
Q: Which one of us should win the can opener?
I’ve got a better idea. Raise taxes on the hyper rich and corporations. Cut the Pentagon drastically. Adequately fund the rest of our government.
LOWERING the retirement age would be the best way to help with unemployment in the short term. But you can’t drown government in the bath tub if you do that.
You, because you post here.
You don’t need no stinkin’ bimodal chart to know when your body has had it./s
You a right about the wars. It is that giant whorlish sucking sound that never stops no matter where you are or what time of day it is. More seriously, it is tragic for our country to be bringing death and terror to the world and us helpless to stop it. It is haunting me.
I don’t think this is going to end well. We’re to the point where there is no check on elite power, and that is dangerous.
We’re going full blown fascist after the next time the economy collapses…a collapse that is the direct result of the actions of the people seeking to seize that kind of power.
And farther down the rabbit hole we tumble.
This is America, so things won’t be quite the same, of course. Mustn’t rile the electorate until all of the elections are decided by rigged electronic voting. We’re progressing – if you can call it that – forward to the day when “our” representatives bitch that the poor need to work to pay for their social services.
Then they’ll complain that the poor are slacking off and are shiftless, not carrying their weight.
Then comes the brilliant idea that it would be far more efficient if the poor were sent to locations where they can be monitored to ensure they are working and not slacking off.
Then they will complain that the workers there aren’t being punctual and need more intensive supervision.
Then they will insist the poor live on-site until their debts to society are repaid.
They will at some point decide it’s more efficient to use prison labor, too.
Then they will suggest housing both together, as it costs money to monitor and house two groups of people essentially performing the same function – slave labor.
Then they will insist they need guard towers and barbed wire to keep their prisoners from escaping.
There can be little doubt “We the people” are enemies of the state.
Here’s a little play list that came Jesse Cafe blog spot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0eyxlRGo5Y&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avGl7k4OGJY&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTdiq61-VOQ&feature=player_embedded
Amazing that everyone in Washington DC is so very out of touch that they do not realize that most of America is walking on a razor’s edge right now. Coming out with these suggestions from the LetThemEatCakeChairmen on the same day Obama walks back pulling troops from Afghanistan in July just ain’t too smart. It could begin the tipping over the edge. If the government wants the public to riot, they should just keep this up.
There a lot of parallels. The key item today seems to be the upper class crapping on the ‘working classes’ and humiliating them with more taxes for them and less pensions for them and less taxes for the rich and more wealth for them. That humiliation makes for revolutions, or worse dictatorships. I see the Right as trying always to position themselves to be the party of ‘order, discipline, personal responsibility’ and threatening that anything other than their rule will lead to ‘chaos’ or worse ‘anarchy’. So yes, these look like all of the ‘signs’.
Oh, but they do. That’s precisely what they want everyone to do. Riot.
That triggers emergency powers in the Patriot Act. That allows the President to commandeer every business in the nation. Every single one of them will then get their marching orders from Washington. The entire nation will be under a form of martial law never even envisioned by despots around the world. It essentially dissolves Congress and the courts. Recall the scene in Star Wars when they gave their power away to the chancellor? They’ll all cheer.
And then they get to lock “We the people” up as domestic terrorists whose actions denied some of them profits. There will be much celebration in Washington (and in Brussels).
This is what it means to owe bankers. This is what comes of empowering corporations. We are being taken down by NAZIS!!!
You mean like this?
Yeah. Exactly like that.
Man. An ex- selling an ES-175? If that’s not justifiable homicide, I don’t know what is. And a gift from your father, no less?
She
sold
it
for
$150!!!!!!!
Well, eventually I got custody of my son, and that was years ago. So I’ve let bygones be bygones. Still, I don’t know which pissed me off more – that she sold it, or that she sold it for $150!
Nobody riots.
Stay home strikes is a far better idea in with a militarized police force.
Nobody gets hurt, but nothing gets made.
What “gets made” in the U.S.A when everyone doesn’t stay home, besides pizza, sandwiches, and new bombing targets?
Oh. Man. That’s a real version of the $50 Porsche/Corvette/Ferrari sold by the p-o’d ex. It’s good that you can let bygones be bygones.
My ex- sold a handmade chessboard that was a Christmas gift from my dad. The squares were inlaid Koa and Monkeypod. I haven’t been able to let go of that one.
I have a friend who sells fender amps if you are interested. mary at mccurnindesign dot com.
Fixed.
It won’t happen. US sheeples are too distracted by dumb stuff to get off their butts and say boo. They’ll just roll over and take it. It’s what RushGlenn told them to do.
Too late – that’s already happening. Why do you think prison guard unions are so strong, and no rightwinger EVER complains about those unions? In fact, usually conservative candidates, like E-Meg Whitman in CA, get a lot of $$$ and support from prison guard unions, all while they bash away at the teacher unions.
Privatizing prisons is a big industry anymore because it makes the corporate owners wealthy (what else?) from all that slave labor. You’re a day late and a few dollars short to this party. /s
Splendid timing, given tomorrow’s Veterans Day.
Fixed that for you, David!
From what I can see, there’s not a single item on this laundry list that Congress is likely to approve.
The 50-page slide show is worth a read, if only to discover the “buzz words” that Congress and the media will be slinging around.
So..if, by 2075 there are not exchange-driven HCR unicorns crapping rainbows in the streets, perhaps whomever is running Congress at that time may choose to schedule a proposal for discussion of a “Public Option”.
Even more amusing is the CNN frontpage headline that treats this “deficit reduction” proposal as something completely out of the blue. Even my wingnut BiL knows about the Catfood commission….
I’m well aware. Not the best phrasing on my part; I apologize for the misunderstanding.
This was my poorly phrased speculation wrt our large lower class working their way out of the debts and fraud of our tiny wealth class and all of their foreign and/or corporate benefactors, not meant to minimize the status quo as if this isn’t already happening. I live in California and I’ve lived in Texas, which is sufficient for anyone who has recently lived in either to say the problem is already with us – private for-profit prisons and all. What I meant was to point out that the poor and our incarcerated are fast becoming one and the same in the eyes of the state. Eventually they will be merged as one in the practical application of the lower tier of our legal caste system, a process already well underway.
If only we had some hope for change. /s
If things devolve, don’t riot. Sit down on tarmacs, blockade offices. Use the tools of non-violent protest. Whatever you do, don’t riot!
Just grab your HHGTTG and read the comforting words on its face: DON’T PANIC!
It might be best to pack a towel.
Has anyone else noticed that there is either more shit hitting the fan or someone increased the fan speed ?
I’ll take a 32% top tax bracket provided the cap on FICA is lifted.
Heh. And I had the audacity to post a disclosure in a post earlier today that I had the best healthcare in the world, free.
Guess I spoke too soon.
Oh well.
Shouldn’t matter anyway. Veteran, not veteran, rich, poor, old, young, black, white, straight, gay, religious, atheist, whatever whatever whatever whatever, HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT DAMMIT.
It should be free or nearly free at point of service like our public education so that no man, woman, or child has suffer the indignity of bankruptcy merely because of a health problem.
And the assholes that profit off other humans suffering are some of the worst fucking assholes in the history of this earth and deserve a fate I can’t type here.
Whew….
Sorry, had to get that out before the day was over or I was gonna burst.
After reading the proposal, I’d be surprised if $100 billion ended up coming out of defense spending, except for expenses that benefit personnel (those will happen). Look for cuts in contracting ($5.4 billion), shifting to civilian contractors (another $5.4 billion) and “overhead savings” ($28 billion) to be made up by other departments or funds, or just never happen. The MIC ain’t taking this on the chin.
From the DoD website on overhead savings http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=59814 :
“President Barack Obama’s defense budget requests for the next five years reflect the importance of growth for the department, the secretary said. While funding for other federal agencies is flat, the Defense Department is projected for a bit more than 1 percent real growth.
But that growth is not enough to ensure servicemembers receive the best equipment and materials. Gates said the $100 billion in overhead savings he’s working to achieve over the next five years would be put back into the acquisition process.”
snip
“Some of the savings will come from eliminating unneeded programs and activities. Gates already has canceled a number of underperforming or unneeded projects. “Other savings can be found within programs and activities we do need, by conducting them more efficiently,” he said.”
Indeed. The DoD still grows. Over $700 billion for the FY 2011 budget. http://comptroller.defense.gov/budget.html
Yeah. So that’s the reason.
Amen
Is anyone taking notes on the students demonstrating in London?
If we sit still and take this shit we deserve what we get. People like the ones on the commission are sure as hell not going to give up their riches without fighting like hell. Are we going to go quietly back in time to the Dark Ages?
But, I’m sure there are some good things in it…right?
I don’t know why the American people keep having to take it on teh chin for being robbed. that’
s what it is; being punished for being robbed.
Pure Shock Doctrine
And who appointed this billionaire commission aptly named the cat food commission
Borack Hussein Obama and his Treasury henchman 14 out the 18 are Republicans, and we are supposed to vote for HIM because of THEM.
God can 2012 come soon enough with Atilla the Hun runnning against Bob, and Im voting for Atilla!
Yup. The Pentagon plays this game all the time: It projects an over-the-top budget for things it doesn’t need or knows it won’t get (e.g. combat vehicles as yet not realized). When the overage is not funded, it very publicly lets everyone know how it had to cut its budget, even though said budget ends up being larger than the previous year. It always grows and it always needs more. Who is going to buck the MIC and the culture of militarism in this era of “security” needs?
Bet on any savings proposed by Gates to go to defense contractors (who do you think is going to loose this pissing contest?) and any actuals cuts to come out of the hide of personnel.
Well, they’re trying real hard to privatize the public educational system too. charter schools and all.
then, of course you can’t go to college at all unless you’re a millionaire at least
Repost from a response on HuffPost: In relation to narratives created by Fox/Koch Brothers, etc., and what was the continuing mindset of the remaining Bush II minority, President Obama appointed a biased Deficit Commission – during a Second Depression. At the same time, he “Put Social Security on the Table.” Then, the Deficit Commission’s (predetermined) recommendations were put off until after the midterms. Now, with a new House, Obama and the remaining Blue Dogs will seek even more of that (veil of) “Common Ground,” and “Compromise” – while the sacrificed hear further sermons on the sanctity of sacrificing.
Obama Put Social Security on the Table
Midterm: Further Right Lays Waste to What is Left
Why does the media not note that the $4 trillion in savings claimed by the Catfood commission is the same as the $4 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich and corporate. The $700 billion number batted around is just the millionaire tax cut from the change to the highest marginal tax rate. The whole tax cut is $4 billion.
The average fellow would be much better off with Clinton tax rates and none of the cat food commission changes.
Is this again going to the current bait same one which proved wildly successful in getting individual mandates for AHIP and Pharma.
Social Security is a too holy concept to guard and they have no business in putting tweaks to a well functioning system paid by middle and poor class themselves for their future safety. Grid-lock is the solution and I do not expect any mainstream friendly tweaks if they attempt it because of the now familiar bait and switch at the end.
There was an excellent article recently which shows the taxes paid by major corporations was close to zero and the ways they were doing it. So this proposal just makes it more legal and no difference from current situation.
BTW. How about Swiss bank accounts we heard two years back. Are those accounts now getting properly taxed or not. How about those bailout dollars and the liabilities public took for the housing assets. How was QE1 in trillions worked out and did they retire it yet in the interests of the deficit.
Great thing they thought about was removing home loan interest credit so that more home-owners will be homeless by making unaffordable just as if we have a housing shortage right now.
Only and probably most important thing they want to remove is the one institution i.e. social security which provides constant stimulus to the economy irrespective of wall street pump and dump schemes and bring on Depression. Then its all party time because Government will agree to any number of Bailouts just requesting wall street to help it recover job market and the depression cycle repeats when wall street wants more money.