The purpose of raising the retirement age, we’re told, is to increase cat food sales save money and put Social Security on a path to long-term solvency. But the bean-counting geniuses Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson didn’t take one thing into account: it could actually cost more to the system if people go on disability [...]

We definitely needed another greybeard panel to tell us all to sacrifice to “get our fiscal house in order.” And that’s what we got today, with the Domenici-Rivlin Bipartisan Policy Center report on debt reduction. Pete Domenici is the former Republican Senator from New Mexico who at the end liked to walk around Congress in [...]

Peter Orszag writes about the Bowles-Simpson recommendations on Social Security, and generally finds them amenable. I don’t know why this should come as a surprise – they basically take a similar form as his Diamond-Orszag recommendations, with a mixture of benefit cuts and payroll tax increases to arrive at long-term solvency. Orszag rightly notes that [...]

This post has been published at 11:00 on the 11th day on the 11th month. Happy Armistice Day. And so to tie it in with the theme, let’s look at one part of the deficit commission co-chair’s mark, their cuts to the military budget, about $100 billion in annual savings. The Bowles-Simpson report walls off [...]

I know the world-weary journalist pose is to huff that the catfood commission will go nowhere, that the recommendations released today are politically impossible, and that it’s not worth getting worked up about. Indeed, any proposal that both Grover Norquist and Paul Krugman can take time beating about the face and mouth doesn’t appear to [...]

The reviews are rolling in for the spending cut-heavy Bowles-Simpson recommendations. And nobody’s about to throw them a party. Here’s AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka: 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 [...]

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 [...]

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the President’s fiscal commission, are holding a surprise press conference at this hour to announce the chairman’s mark for recommendations to deal with the nation’s budget deficit. Included in those recommendations are benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as tax changes. Importantly, this is a [...]

Brian Beutler notes that Raul Grijalva’s letter opposing any benefit cuts to Social Security has the support of 55 House Democrats, with more expected before tomorrow’s circulation deadline. But this could just be a first step. I reported earlier this month that other options beyond a letter have been under discussion in the caucus: An [...]

Members of the cat food commission have consistently said that they will put a priority on spending cuts with their recommendations for deficit reduction. Co-Chair of the commission Erskine Bowles has, in fact, made a long-term spending target of 21% of GDP. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has written a report on this [...]

The devils we know in the battle to protect Social Security are Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission, lovingly described around these parts as the cat food commission. It lived up to its name yesterday, as Bowles and Simpson described the budget as “a cancer that will destroy the [...]