The Gang of Six Plan is a Joke

Which is why it will probably pass. It does one or two useful things, one or two not useful things, and dicks around with the most needful thing, which is cutting spending and reforming entitlements.

Dan Mitchell has the details. (h/t: Protein Wisdom)

"Forget lifeboats. We need to rearrange these chairs!"

UPDATE: Ezra Klein tries to spin the thing, and it remains as stationary as a Soviet monument: (h/t: Memeorandum)

Then the Budget Committee is charged with drawing up legislation to extend the caps on discretionary spending — which cover both defense and non-defense, and, if I understand this right, cut more than $1 trillion from projected spending — until 2021, and to draw up an enforcement mechanism that will kick in if deficit reduction isn't on track come 2015. Come 2020, federal health spending is put on a global budget, with growth not to exceed GDP plus 1 percent. Finally, once all that's passed, the Finance Committee is asked to produce legislation making Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, and their product is assured certain procedural advantages. There's very little in the way of specifics here, but there's an odd line suggesting that if this effort fails, then the vote on the whole deficit-reduction plan is invalidated.

In other words, most of the big savings come from telling the Senate Finance Committee to find said savings later on, and pinky-swearing that they'll make it easy for them to do so. The $500 billion up-front savings come mostly from some accounting tricks, including a reduction in Social Security's COLA adjustment.


And how is that markedly different from the House GOP's "Cut, Cap, and Balance" plan? A few ways:

1. Raising the Debt Ceiling is contingent on a Balanced-Budget Amendment. The BBA outlaws deficit spending and requires a two-thirds vote for tax increases.
2. The Up-Front Savings come mostly from non-defense discretionary spending. Such spending is reduced to FY2008. The actual number of savings is less, $111 billion to $500 billion, but the savings are more real.
3. This is acknowledged as the beginning of fiscal sanity, not the end of it. Obama has been touting a "big plan" so he can say that he "made hard choices" during next year's campaign. He wants to pretend that our nation's fiscal health can be tied up in a pretty package with the word "DONE" on the label.

In other words, CCB requires making actual spending cuts, while GO6 requires pretending that we have already made them.