The chairmen of the president's debt commission should keep on pushing, and threaten to go rogue, if needed. Their proposal Wednesday went down like a lead zeppelin. Their own commission members pussy-footed away from it; the president's knees showed early signs of buckling. And raise your hand if you were stunned when Nancy Pelosi disavowed it for cutting benefits and Grover Norquist slammed it for raising taxes? Well, at least they are consistent in their cowardice.
It probably didn't help that Bowles and Simpson released their paper the same day British students took to the streets in violent protests over Prime Minister David Cameron's austerity measures. You could imagine Republican strategists watching TV and thinking to themselves, "When we said 'Tea Party' we meant the peaceful kind."
Matt Miller says the new proposal isn't enough, and he is no doubt right. He's certainly more right than the Pelosis or Norquists, who live in a fictional world where nobody pays more or gets less or gets older or sicker or needier, and our balance sheets miraculously balance themselves, and we kick China's butt, because this is America!
Ezra Klein complains that the commission construct is useless because they have no power and have no votes and can't get anything done. He writes:
the report doesn't fulfill its basic purpose, which was demonstrating enough consensus among congressional representatives of both parties to convince the public and the political system that Congress is ready to make these choices.
But Klein, apparently without irony, also says, "Some of it I like, some of it I don't like, and some of it I need to think more about." Exactly. This is precisely why the commission is not an effort to build bipartisan congressional consensus.
Which brings me to the rogue part of the operation. Bowles and Simpson surely released their thoughts because they can't get 14 commissioners to support them and because they certainly can't get either party on board. If they feel strongly about the deficit, they should go totally independent, get some private funding, and engage in the 2012 elections. Demand a balanced budget plan from every national candidate. Release an independent report card of what the deficit will look like for each plan (and run TV ads showing, e.g., "Sarah Palin's deficit reduction plan: F.") And in case anyone needs a real wakeup call, play some footsie with Mike Bloomberg if and when he gets bored in New York.
This report is a conversation starter, not an end-point. Every politician in America is going to try to run like hell from the commission, because while lots of people admire David Cameron, no one wants to be him. But Rome is burning, and we need some people to shine a spotlight on the fiddlers occupying both sides of the aisle in the Capitol building.
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