deficit commission

I continue to be astounded at how many people…including a number of supposed insiders who should know much better…continue to believe that the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction deal agreed to just before Congress left town for the summer recess is going to have as big of a positive impact on the budget outlook as we were promised when the legislation – the “Budget Control Act” – was signed into law.

In fact, if budget history is any guide, the overwhelming likelihood is that the deal will have no impact whatsoever and will be abandoned long before it is implemented.

This first of two posts on this subject is about the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (aka “the super committee”) that, in spite of all the evidence absolutely to the contrary, somehow is going to come up with the deficit reduction plan that up to now has been impossible to achieve.

The key thing to keep in mind about the super committee is that there’s a long and storied history of budget commissions completely failing to accomplish anything.

Remember the "era of deficit denial" that Erskine Bowles, one of the co-chairs of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission, declared a week ago was over as he introduced the plan he wanted considered?

Well...It may have been a good line that got lots of media attention, but it can now be listed as one of the top overstatements of 2010.  As this poll from Bloomberg News (which was taken after the Bowles-Simpson commission's activities were completed last week) shows, Bowles was completely wrong.  Here are the three (excuse the obvious pun) money quotes:

The public wants Congress to keep its hands off entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. They oppose cuts in most other major domestic programs and defense.

As I promised yesterday, my column from today's Roll Call explains in more detail why the Bowles-Simpson commission shouldn't be considered a success.

If you still have doubts that Bowles-Simpson failed to change budget politics and deficit dynamics, just take a look at the tax/unemployment benefits/estate tax/god-knows-what-else deal announced late yesterday: Less than a week after the commission ended, congressional Republicans once again have eagerly agreed to policies that will dramatically and substantially increase the deficit. So much for the notion by commission supporters that what it did represents a sea change in the way we'll deal with this issue and an indication that the budget times have changed.

I'll have much more about this on Tuesday in my weekly column in Roll Call but, for now...

1. The Bowles-Simpson commission was created on a pass-fail basis.  Get 14 votes and you pass; get less than 14 votes and you fail.  The plan was only supported by 11 commissioners so the math isn't that hard.
2. The 11 members of the commission who favored the plan likely overstates the actual amount of support.  It seems clear that at least two and maybe more announced their support only when they were certain the plan wouldn't get 14 votes.  Their approval was more about political posturing for the future than actual enthusiasm.
3. Don't read too much into the bipartisan support for some of the options.  If these same proposals are considered at all, they will next be debated in a very different political context and in a package that will look very different from the one the commission considered.  Support for them in the commission is no indication they will be supported again.
4. Don't read too much into the enthusiastic response the plan received from various deficit hawk groups.  Many of them supplied the

As a communicator (my day job is partner in a communications agency) and as a budgeteer, I'm increasingly struck by the inept way the two chairs of the president's deficit reduction commission -- Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson -- are only explaining why their plan should be accepted in terms of the pain that will be felt because of what they are proposing.

They, and all those that support the notion that this is all good because they've finally started "an adult conversation" about the reducing the deficit an insult to everyone who has had a serious discussion on the budget over the years, and there have been many) seem to think that the other side of the equation for voters -- how they will benefit if they agree to the pain -- doesn't need to be spelled out or even mentioned.

And talking about it in general terms about how good it will be for my grandchildren doesn't work.

This is a huge, and probably fatal, mistake.