Atrios has a good example of political elites being just plain incompetent: here’s Alan Simpson on not caring about whether his proposal gets any votes.
SIMPSON: Wolf, I guess you don’t understand. We didn’t care if we got two votes.
I suppose this is the bluster of a failed fool, but the purpose of the commission, however misguided, wasn’t to release an unpopular report entitled “How Alan Simpson Wants to Destroy America,” it was to…come up with something that could attract broad support.
I’ve read a few things in favor of the Bowles-Simpson, most of it is just “sacrifice is good” blah blah, but David Broder claims that the recommendations could close a trillion dollars in tax loopholes. I don’t know if that is true or not, but if David Broder is writing it, then Simpson himself could have been saying it all along (and getting Villagers to nod along), instead of screaming about tits and cows.
But instead of framing the debate on the commission around “reform” and “closing loopholes” and other stuff the public might like, Simpson decided to frame it around abolishing a wildly popular government program. He decided to keep his hand solidly on the third rail of American politics when he could have just spun a lot of happy talk about “reform”.
That is not good business, my friend.
Now I understand that Simpson really does want to kill Social Security, but he’s an idiot if he thinks that making crazy faux-folksy public pronouncements is the right way to do it. I also understand that many believe that the proposal itself sucks (I tend to agree). Regardless, he did a horrendous job of selling it because he is an incompetent boob who is not good at his job.
(As an aside, my point in the post where I mentioned Nate Silver is that Silver was smart to move into political statistical analysis because it truly is/was more of a backwater than sports statistics — and thus a ripe area for groundbreaking work — because in the past it didn’t attract a lot of talented people to study it.)
geg6
Awesome title, Doug. You really are the master at that.
Simpson is an ass and I knew from the moment that he was named as one of the chairmen that this is how it would end up. He has never been one to know when to shut his big fat piehole and it looks like his time out of the Senate hasn’t done anything to change him.
The Catfood Commission was a bad idea from the start. Deficit reduction isn’t the answer to any of the problems we face today. That’s for another day, when and IF we ever pull out of the disaster that our economy is today.
DougJ
@geg6:
And that may be what happened here: Obama or whoever wanted the commission to be a huge failure, so they made sure Simpson co-chaired it.
BGinCHI
Anyone want to take a crack at why Dick Durbin came out today in favor of the report? He has “problems” with it, but overall it signals the kind of sacrifice America needs to make to right the economy (or something).
Is he running for something?
Jan Schakowsky ate his fucking lunch on this one: the people in the country, right now, don’t start from the same place. The middle and lower classes have taken huge hits over the last 10+ years and the upper classes have not. The wealthy also voted in greater numbers and with more financial support for an admin that took us to war while happily accepting tax cuts and refusing to pay for any of it. And so NOW we’re ALL supposed to sacrifice? For those are are seriously struggling, what the fuck do they have to sacrifice with?
No, Dick. Fuck you.
mai naem
These mofos will pass this crap with Obama’s blessing and then the corporations and other various Wall Streeters will come in and add all the corporate deductions back in and so as usual the middle class get screwed in the ass, again.
StevenDS
I don’t see how you can possibly say that there weren’t smart people analyzing political polls before Nate Silver jumped in. They just weren’t bloggers.
I suspect that Silver started blogging about politics, for free on Daily Kos, for the same reason anyone starts blogging about politics – he had something to say and he wanted to say it, rather than he expected blogging to lead to fame and fortune.
It just so happened that he was really good at it, and his voice/perspective was unique. So he got attention, then he got money to start up fivethirtyeight, then the NYT came calling, etc.
c u n d gulag
“Regardless, he did a horrendous job of selling it…”
Simpson couldn’t sell anything. Not even coffins at a funeral home.
Potential buyers would look at him lying there and think, “He looks too dead,” and run away when he rose up and tried to close the deal, leaving a trail of body waste frightened out of them.
What a sad excuse for a human being.
Earl Butz
I always think this is the same idiot who was involved in the Keating Five. Turns out this is a different idiot.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Don’t gimme no lines an’ keep your hands to yourself!
Simpson? Ewww…
Skeletor’s strange Uncle.
BGinCHI
According to TPM, they dissolved the Commission without taking an official vote!
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/fail-fiscal-commission-adjourns-without-holding-official-vote.ph…
Profiles in Courage.
Ps. Fuck Erskine Bowles whose resume at solving problems and doing good would fit on the head of a pin.
dr. bloor
1. The only way something can be less true than if Broder says it is if Broder and Will both say it.
2. With respect to the “Crazy, cranky old guy” factor, Simpson is the Ur-Coot. He has chunks of McCain in his Metamucil-driven stool. He didn’t act otherwise because it’s not in his genes to do so.
Zifnab
@geg6:
The commission wasn’t a bad idea on it’s face.
We do have a yawning deficit. We will need to close it eventually. It is a politically toxic mess to deal with. Compromise and sacrifice will have to be made at some point.
But the Commission was staked with the same assholes and special interest suck-ups as the House and Senate. Rather than serious people, we got “Serious People”. Obama would have been better off just stacking the whole damn thing with his ideological allies. At least then he’d have a liberal solution he could bill as “The Obama Way Forward”. Now he’s got no solution and it’s getting billed as Obama’s fault.
Paul Moeller
When it comes to Simpson, narcissism trumps everything else.
BGinCHI
@Zifnab: Plus we got Pete Peterson’s hacks, paid to tell us all how that 9 million year old shriveled up billionaire thinks we all ought to sacrifice.
Hey Pete: put your money into paying off the debt and shut up.
Valens
David Broder loved the bipartisan nature of the debt commission. He also says there is more “trust” in Washington today. And how do make sense of this:
Benen went after Broder yesterday for his column. Broder is living on another planet.
Mnemosyne
@mai naem:
Um, how are they supposed to “pass” anything when the commission has been dissolved without even taking a vote?
I realize that pre-despair is the order of the day, but at least pay attention to current events and realize that there is no report from the commission. The only thing that exists is the Simpson/Bowles PowerPoint presentation, and that’s not going anywhere.
Zifnab
@BGinCHI: That’s what I’m saying. If Obama wanted his name on this commission, why the hell did he allow guys he disagreed with to chair it? Did he think if he put enough shit in a room he’d get a pony?
I thought Obama was a student of history. Now he’s just a victim of it.
sukabi
Here’s the thing DougJ… Simpson didn’t care if his proposal got any votes because he knows that the whole “commission to study” thing was just an exercise to provide cover for the odious crap and cuts that will be happening in the near future. The Ds & Rs will be able to pull suggestions out of the report and have Simpson et al to “thank”.
Mike Goetz
Now that it’s over, can we please stop talking about this as though it matters? Can we not be tetchy and glum for three seconds?
SFAW
Oh come on, Doug, that was obvious in the original post, no need to ‘splain further.
Mike Goetz
How are they going to pass anything out of this report when the Representative members on both sides rejected it out of hand? Don’t you need some members willing to vote for it in the House? It’s dead.
martha
Hey, the best thing to come out of this Commission is that it has exposed the odious “Young Gun” Paul Ryan for what he is…take it away Sully:
Ryan talked the talk re deficit reduction until he decided all his wacko Medicare voucher/kill Obamacare goals were more important than…real deficit reduction. Imagine that.
PurpleGirl
While there may not be an “official” report from the commission, members of congress can take ideas from it and try to get those passed into legislation. I won’t put it past either party to try that.
DougJ
@SFAW:
It’s not my fault some commenters are slow.
Martin
@BGinCHI: I was actually warming up to quite a few of the recommendations as I worked through them.
Cranking up the retirement age 75 years from now hardly seems like the kind of apostasy that Democrats blasted the commission for. Life expectancy was lower than the retirement age back when Social Security passed 75 years ago. Today it’s 10 years higher. And concern for the nations ditch-diggers is sweet, but do we really think we’ll have more of them retiring in 2085?
And the tax proposals really were quite progressive and seriously closed up one of the worst loopholes for the rich – the insanely low rate for long-term cap gains, without penalizing lower income folks from investing by giving them a lower rate. Yeah, the top marginal rate was lower, but so many loopholes and deductions were closed up in the proposal that the effective rate was almost guaranteed to be higher.
I know Democrats lost their shit over the recommendations, but that seemed to be based more on an expectation that they should lose their shit over the recommendations, rather than on the recommendations themselves.
SFAW
Yeah, it was, because it was Obama’s unfortunate response to the Rethugs shrieking about how Teh Deficit Is Teh Worstest Thing Since Creation.
You statement would be more accurate/appropriate if Obama waited to do the commission thing after unemployment dropped below 7%, or maybe U6 dropped below 10%. (Of course, this assumes that he’s not a closet Rethug with respect to growth vs. cutting. I am still hopeful that he is not, but it’s getting tougher to tell.)
burnspbesq
@BGinCHI:
Dude, there are only two alternatives: eat a shit sandwich or starve. Are you choosing starvation?
SFAW
Wait … whut?
Paris
Simpson has reached the point in his life where politics is no fun any more and he just says “F*ck this” and lets his curmudgeon flag fly.
Martin
@PurpleGirl: That won’t happen. The point of the commission was to get an agreed shared burden by Congressional leaders that they wouldn’t squabble over in Congress. That’s why the deal was an up or down vote, no amendments on what passed out of commission. Taking ideas will fail because it’ll again turn into political gamesmanship rather than problem solving.
PurpleGirl
@Martin: There are people currently unemployed who are in their 50s. They can not get jobs… for years… and yet they are supposed to work longer? Can I have your job?
If! if get a job sometime soon, I will probably have to work until 70 just to make up for the savings and retirement money that I had to live on when my unemployment benefits ran out (yes, my benefits ran out months ago). The assets are gone now.
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
Well, actually, it was Obama’s response to the Senate Blue Dogs (you know, conservative Democrats) who demanded it in exchange for their votes on the stimulus and health care.
But why stick to reality and facts?
SFAW
Yeah, what was especially appalling was the way they went after the proposal to remove the $106K-salary “cap” on contributions to Social Security.
Mike Goetz
@Paris:
And more sympathetic to that position I could not be. It’s a constant emo drag, man.
PurpleGirl
@Martin: You are so optimistic. Nothing says any Congressman can’t take an idea and try to work it into something. Maybe not the whole package but an idea here, an idea there… they can claim that’s the mandate they got from the midterm elections. Or maybe I’ve just become a very cynical person.
Mike Goetz
@Mnemosyne:
Nobody seems to get that Obama has spent all his time getting Democrats from conservative districts on board, not Republicans. Obama has proven that he will happily sign bills that no Republicans voted for. But some Democrats just don’t like voting for straight partisan bills, so he has to spend time to try to get some Republicans. It’s for the sake of those Dems, period. It’s the only way to get to 60.
BGinCHI
@Martin: Seriously? You needed a Commission to tell you those things?
I could have solved those problems in a bar with three of my friends and a calculator.
It’s the rest of the shit that’s in it, as well as the “now we all have to sacrifice” bullshit that makes it impossible to support.
You start off from the wrong principles and you get that kind of ideological crap. The first thing they should have done was assessed HOW we got to this point and what sorts of ideas got us here. Hint: the same ones those on the right have put into the plan and still support.
Martin
@PurpleGirl: GAAAAAH! NOOOO!!
This is the problem. Anyone in their 50s still doesn’t even have to wait until age 67, nor do they take the full early retirement penalty. That only applies to people born after 1960. The age of retirement for anyone at least in their 30s wasn’t going to be touched, and for anyone younger than that, it’d be phased in just like it was previously, so a month here and month there. The real action on Social Security was raising the payroll cap – and those would hit earlier and only apply to the wealthy. The commissions recommendation for a full retirement age of 69 only applied to people that haven’t even been fucking born yet!
You people need to stop attacking policies that you simply don’t fucking understand until you fucking understand them.
Zifnab
@SFAW:
At the rate progress moves in Congress, we probably should have convened this commission back in the 50s if we’d wanted to see action in the next ten years.
That said, taxes are too low and medical expenses (much of which is the burden of the state) are too high. The wars aren’t paying for themselves. And the economy is in the crapper because of unemployment.
This commission hit all the relevant notes – tax hikes, cuts to health care spending, cuts to military spending, and money for job programs – but achieved them in the most dickish way possible. Stimulus creates job growth which buffers tax receipts. Jobs are as much a tax issue as spending cuts and tax increases.
So I don’t think the commission’s timing should have been tied to a lower employment rate at all. If anything, the commission should have spent more time discussing the cost/benefit of additional stimulus spending to spur the economy precisely because employment is vital in increasing tax revenue.
SFAW
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”.
That, and shitty memory. Thanks for the correction.
Although, in fairness (to me, of course), Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln (et al.) wouldn’t have been nearly so intransigent had the Rethugs not been shrieking about it. A shrieking which was, interestingly enough, lacking two-plus years ago.
But I’m a little curious: the ARRA and HCRA votes were months apart, so how was it a response to both of them? (No, I don’t believe he suddenly had an epiphany because of the cumulative pressure caused by all his “big-gov” initiatives.)
BGinCHI
@burnspbesq: Neither. I’m taking the wealthy’s sandwiches and shitting in a bag on their front porch.
But seriously, dude, those are the alternatives? How about we tax wealth and reward provable job creation?
Plus, health care costs are the real driving force of the deficit in the future and corporate America and the right have their head in the sand about solving that.
Get serious.
Maude
@DougJ:
Checkmate
# 2 comment
Martin
@PurpleGirl: The point of the commission, it’s very goal, was to put the majority and minority leaders in one room, along with the folks that would lobby most heavily against a solution, and come up with something that everyone agreed would get a vote and which leadership could get their caucuses behind. Get everyone on the record as supporting this framework. No finger pointing, no filibuster, no amendments, no votes along partisan lines.
This is the kind of problem where *everyone* loses, and because of that, nobody has a reason to play, which is why nothing has happened. The only way to solve such a problem is to either rely in people’s good nature or to get everyone to agree to the pain equally. None of these ideas are new. We didn’t need a commission to come up with ideas. We needed a commission to come up an acceptable balance. That was the charge. If Congress was interested in taking any of these ideas up, they would have done so already.
SFAW
My point was that, although Obama is capable of holding two disparate thoughts in his head simultaneously, most Americans (especially Rethugs) are not. When you’re trying to get the country back toward full employment, spending time on deficit-cutting proposals is window-dressing, dog-and-pony, whatever-you-want-to-call-it. To use a (probably bad) metaphor: when the ship is sinking, you want someone to get you a life jacket (i.e. job), not tell you that the ship should have had double-wall construction (deficit reduction) in the first place.
Sorry for not being more obvious about it. (No, not being snarky.)
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
Oh, I agree — they always sided with the Republicans unless their asses were kissed just right. Unfortunately, we needed their votes to overcome cloture.
It went kinda like this:
Obama: “Hey, can you vote for ARRA?”
Blue Dogs: “Well, okay, but we want a deficit commission in return.”
Obama: “Okay, I’ll get right on that.”
Several months later …
Obama: “Hey, I need you to vote for HCRA.”
Blue Dogs: “Nuh-uh. You promised us a deficit commission months ago and you haven’t done a thing. Give us one or we’ll form our own.”
Obama: “Okay, okay.”
Maude
@41
I meant the #2 comment and the edit went strange
SFAW
Mnemosyne –
Thanks.
ruemara
@Zifnab:
Again with this bs.
Obama is responsible for approving the appointment of the commission and appointing 6 members, he could not stack the commission. Source.
Under the agreement, the commission would have 18 members, including six lawmakers appointed by congressional Democrats and six lawmakers appointed by congressional Republicans. Obama would appoint six others, only four of whom could be Democrats.
The valid suggestions from the Commission’s chairs, like lifting the income cap on SS contributions, and the military cuts, are the only things I will cry about going away. No one will bring those back up after this clusterfuck. I say lower the retirement age too. We needs jobs, old guys need to take a relaxing gardening hobby or learn to snowboard or something. Win fucking win. Simpson and Bowles can go eat gruel.
Kyle
@Zifnab:
Probably some Wall Street lobbyist put a list of names together. As we have disastrously experienced, Wall Street thinks if you pile ten different kinds of shit together and slice it up that it becomes perfumed roses with a AAA rating from Moody’s. Alan Simpson is a human defaulted subprime mortgage.
Sentient Puddle
@BGinCHI:
Yep, this is the key. Health care is the long-term deficit problem. Everything other than health care isn’t even icing on the cake. Voting on a deficit reduction plan that doesn’t seriously tackle health care isn’t a choice between shit sandwich and starving. It’s more like the choice between being somewhat dehydrated and drinking a glass of mercury.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Now that $250,000 a year is the new “middle class,” shouldn’t the income cap be at least that?
Just sayin’.
Tractarian
Jerky Boys reference? FTW!
DBrown
Martin – you are either an ass or lacking in knowledge – try learning facts before you state that life expency has been climbing – yes, for the wealthy, but it hasn’t for the lower classes and they are the ones who most need to retire as soon as possible – raising the age steals from the poor to make the wealthy more profits. If you are a troll -eat shit and die; if you are honestly trying to make valid points, then learn the facts before agreeing with people who lie for a living – thugs are assholes and don’t need anyone helping to spread their lies.
NonyNony
@DougJ:
As I have said elsewhere – if I thought Obama had given us evidence elsewhere that he was a Machiavellian game-player on the level of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, I’d find this thesis plausible.
But he hasn’t. Every indication is that Obama is exactly what he presents himself to be – a moderate technocratic wonk who doesn’t see politics as adversarial but as people who have different ideas about how government is supposed to function arguing about it and then compromising to somewhere in the middle of those ideas.
It’s not like this isn’t exactly who he told us he was when he was running for office either. He gave wonderfully poetic speeches that, if you dig down into them, reveal either nothing of substance or, when they were substantive, revealed he was a … moderate technocratic wonk who doesn’t see politics as adversarial but as a form of debate and compromise to get shit done.
It’s just who he is. And who he always has been. And, perhaps most importantly, exactly who he told us he was when he was running for office. I know the expectation is that politicians are liars, but perhaps this is an exception?
PurpleGirl
@Martin: For people born between 1943 and 1954 (me) the full retirement age is 66. Were I able to retire early (3 years from now) my benefits would take a 25% reduction.
ssa.gov/retirement/1943.html
I know it wouldn’t apply to me but I don’t think the retirement age should be raised. There are fewer jobs now and there will continue to be fewer jobs in the future. Requiring people to work longer means that younger people entering the workforce will not have jobs available to them, unless older people continue to be shoved out without resources to live on. Later retirement is a bad idea.
DougJ
@Tractarian:
I’m glad someone got it, I say that all the time in real life and no one understands it.
geg6
@Martin:
Sorry, but according to the statements I am sent by SS, I will not be able to retire until I’m 67 (technically, 66 and 10 months). I was born in 1958. If I retire at 62, I lose almost 30% (I think it’s well over 28%).
At the rate things are going, I’ll be working until I die.
PurpleGirl
@geg6: Yes. Early retirement is not an option for many people right now. It was in the days of defied pension plans from companies, but those have gone the way of the Dodo.
Mnemosyne
Aw, geez. Some idiot broke the thread below again.
This is what happens when clueless trolls show up.
Martin
@geg6: You can retire whenever the fuck you want. If you have a 401k, 403b, IRA or other plan, retire at 59 1/2, take distributions from that without penalty until you are 67, and then turn on SS to supplement. If you have a pension, turn that on whenever its rules allow.
I would argue that the government directed retirement age is 59 1/2, and I’ve seen no efforts to move that number. For workers no who don’t want to wait until 67 (or 69) to retire, toss a few grand into a retirement account when you’re in your 20s – $50 a month or something – hook that to an S&P500 index fund, and 30 years later you’ll probably have enough to bridge from 59 1/2 to when full SS benefits kick in. Since all of the discussions about pushing back the retirement age apply only to people younger than 30, that’s perfectly reasonable to tell people to do.
SS was never designed to be a full retirement plan and people need to stop pretending that it is one. It’s an anti-poverty plan, and that’s all. The crime here isn’t that we’re poking at SS, but that we’ve allowed defined benefit plans (pensions) to get slaughered for blue-collar workers by attacking the unions. They’re the ones that will run into physical reasons why they can’t make it to 67 and will need a real retirement bridge, which a pension is equipped to provided. For white collar workers, they should be able to wait that long provided they keep their skills up and aren’t subject to age discrimination (a different issue) and should be better able to manage their own retirement if they wish to retire earlier.
If you consider SS to be your retirement plan and to constrain when you retire, then the solution to moving your retirement forward is to invest just enough to bridge from the year you want to retire to when SS turns on. With no job and the expenses that come with it, and presumably with no kids to support, the size of that investment is pretty damn small. My dad was living on around $6K per year after he retired at 50, and with quite a bit of creativity (he had the time to burn) he still managed 5 trips to Europe each at least 3 weeks long, a month in south america, and a month bouncing around asia before he turned 62 and flipped the SS switch. His source of income for that time was planting flowers for people and giving dance lessons, both of which were hobbies.
Bobby Thomson
Since Broder is making the claim, does the question even need to be asked?
Steve
Not to sound too butthurt, but there are (and have been) a lot of talented people who do this sort of work for a long time. Most work in academia or other research settings, which is good for developing research but not necessarily for getting their work noticed by people who don’t care about such things. Some of them are currently collaborating with Silver and welcome the attention that he has brought to their field.
Silver’s accomplishment (beyond his really good polling work) has be popularizing this kind of work and showing people the possibilities, and limitations, of such research.
Martin
@Bobby Thomson: Actually, Broder is at least in the ballpark on this one, I’m almost sorry to say.
The biggest tax loophole is the shifting of earned income to capital gains, and off of whatever marginal rate they’d pay to the 15% long-term rate. Warren Buffet is not an atypical example. His salary is around $200K, but he regularly takes in the neighborhood of $50M from his investments. On that he pays 15%. Under the commission proposal, he’d pay almost double that. Virtually every executive and investor in America would face the same sort of tax hike.
BGinCHI
@Martin: That’s where I completely agree with you that there are useful things in the commission’s proposal.
Still, to have to have these things pointed out by Simpson and Bowles, with all the other things that have come with it, is too much.
If the Dems want to get this stuff done, they need to get it out into public discourse openly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: And if my grandmother had wheels, she would be a tram.
Clayton
I have to say, I’m actually amenable to the idea of lowering everyone’s marginal tax rate and closing ALL tax credits/deductions except for maybe children, charity (thought not to Churches unless they are ACTUALLY perform some charity), and well, that’s all I can think of right now (mortage deduction just encourages everyone to buy homes, which seems to have been proven by the bubble as a bad idea). I’m sure there is one or two others out their, but I think it’s true that the since the rich can afford good accountants, they probably benefit way more from tax loopholes. And in my magic structure, hedge fund managers would actually be paying their marginal tax rate and their would be something done about off-shoring income. Lets peg them at 10% for first $100,000, 15% for up to $500,000, and 25% for everything above that.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: All I’m saying is that people that cede all responsibility over their retirement to Social Security is as irresponsible a position to take as those on the right that feel Social Security should be abolished.
We created pre-tax retirement vehicles for a reason, and if people don’t use them and are pissed that they have to work until 67, then I don’t see how that’s the government’s problem. My wife hasn’t worked full time since our first child was born and would have considerable difficulty returning to the workplace if needed, so we’ve been stuffing money into both retirement and personal savings accounts that only have her name on them so that if for any reason I was out of the picture, including a divorce, she would have her own private safety net which will now cover the mortgage payments for 5 years and get her from age 59 1/2 to age 67. The cost of that was cutting about $5 a day out of my expenses for the last 20 years. Peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, carpooling to work, stretching out my work shoes for a year longer than I should so that they now soak my feet every time it rains, waiting too long for haircuts. But I know that should I pass away (or whatever) that I can get my wife and kids through barring any other calamities. That’ll probably require community college and would be easier if they sold the house, but hey, that’s how it goes. Bad shit leads to unfavorable results, but nobody promised bad shit would never happen.
Sure, there are some people that genuinely can’t make this kind of effort, that live that close to the poverty line, and we really need to do a LOT more for those people, but shoving Social Security out by 2 years, 75 years from now is absolutely not the problem. And the number of people that never have the opportunity to do these things, compared to the number that do and choose not to, is way, way smaller than Democrats claim.
Martin
@Clayton: I agree. My preference would be to have a modest individual deduction, let’s say for the sake of argument adjusted to 100% of the poverty level. Essentially, if you earn below the poverty level, you pay no income taxes (you still pay payroll, etc.) It could be higher or lower, but I’d index it to some percentage of that number as I think it’s a rational and justifiable value. On top of that, I’d add a dependents credit. Spouse, child, parent. That too would track with the poverty level.
We’ve got not bad retirement and education plans and deductions. Streamline but keep those to encourage their use. We’ve got not bad health care deductions coming up as part of ACA. Streamline but keep those to encourage people to cover their own expenses.
Call it a day. If you want to encourage people to buy hybrids, then tax gasoline – shift those incentives to consumption, not income.
joe from Lowell
Counter-argument: Chuck Todd.
Chuck Todd was brilliant, awesome, as a numbers-geek guy on MSNBC. As soon as they made him a pundit, he turned into another dull repeater of Village conventional wisdom.
Well, I wanted her real bad
And I was about to give in
That’s when she started talking about true love
Started talking about sin.
DougJ
@joe from Lowell:
Yes, you are right.
EDIT: Also, honey I’ll live with you for the rest of my life.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
Actually, I think the hysteria is coming from the fact that we have a whole lot of people in their mid to late 50s who saw their 401(k)’s lose 50% of their value in 2008 and the housing market crash and now they’re wondering how the hell they can retire. I can understand why those people are completely freaked out at any changes to Social Security, because they really feel (with some justification) that it’s the only thing left.
I know people in their 50s who lost half of their 401(k) and then were laid off, so they were doubly screwed.
mclaren
@DougJ:
Yes, absolutely. I’m now certain that this is what Obama planned from the start. By naming a crank like Alan Simpson to head this commission and stacking it fanatics and kooks and letting fringe lunatics like Pete Petersen influence its deliberations, Obama effectively neutralized the deficit commission.
It’s a rare example of clever political calculation from an administration that otherwise seems politically tone-deaf.