The Cat Food Commission (Updated)

What did anyone expect? From Paul Krugman:

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.

It's obvious what's going on here. The commission is softening us up so that the real proposals, which will be slightly moderated but have the same effect, will look reasonable. At least, to those who live in the Fox universe. Rand Paul is going to love it.

Read Krugman's whole column. Whatever the corporate poobahs may think of him, he's been consistently right throughout this mess. Which is probably why Obama didn't make him Secretary of the Treasury.

The goal, of course, is to gut Social Security -- or really, to hand it over to the people who caused the financial crisis to begin with. Here's a good post from Karoli at C&L on that leg of the scam. Here's a bit of the transcript of -- well, Karoli calls it a "face off," which seems as apt as anything -- between Robert Kuttner and David Walker:

KUTTNER: Let's separate out social security. Social security is going to be in surplus for the next 27 years. Social security has nothing to do with the budget deficit.

WALKER: That is just false. That is false. Social security is running a cash flow deficit. It is adding to the deficit. It will be in a permanent cash flow deficit starting in 2015. That is just false.

KUTTNER: I'm sorry. It is not false.

WALKER: I'm a trustee. I know what the numbers are.

KUTTNER: So do I.

WALKER: Okay.

KUTTNER: This commission was charged with -- the report says social security has nothing to do with the current deficit and the cuts are not going to take effect for decades. I don't know why social security is part of this at all except ideological opposition to the whole idea.

And there you have it. Social Security is not part of the problem, and in spite of what you've been hearing from the right, Social Security is in fine shape. It may need some tweaking in twenty years or so, which seems about on schedule -- it last got tweaked in the '80s.

Look, I'm not an economist, but even I can figure this out.

And Obama will fall into line with it.

Update: Here's Kevin Drum's analysis:

To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn't maintain approximately that ratio shouldn't be considered serious. The Simpson-Bowles plan, conversely, goes into loving detail about cuts to the discretionary budget and Social Security but turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare. That's not serious.

There are other reasons the Simpson-Bowles plan isn't serious. Capping revenue at 21% of GDP, for example. The plain fact is that over the next few decades Social Security will need a little more money and healthcare will need a lot more. That will be true even if we implement the greatest healthcare cost containment plan in the world. Pretending that we can nonetheless cap revenues at 2000 levels isn't serious.

And their tax proposal? As part of a deficit reduction plan they want to cut taxes on the rich and make the federal tax system more regressive? That's not serious either.

Bottom line: this document isn't really aimed at deficit reduction. It's aimed at keeping government small. There's nothing wrong with that if you're a conservative think tank and that's what you're dedicated to selling. But it should be called by its right name. This document is a paean to cutting the federal government, not cutting the federal deficit.