Yet despite what should have been a major discrediting of the whole deficit-hawk establishment, the word is that Wall Street is pushing for Obama to appoint Erskine Bowles as Treasury Secretary.
Erskine Bowles? The man who, charged with producing a deficit-reduction plan, decided that a key feature of this plan should be … cuts in marginal tax rates on high incomes? The man who warned, in dire terms, of a looming fiscal crisis, with soaring US borrowing costs, within two years — almost two years ago? Just for the record, here’s how it’s going:
A dire chart with the trend bound hellwards follows.
I'm not as it happens done with laughing at wingnuts. Much more of that to follow!
But lettuce be clear.
It’s the type of bipartisan package toward which the fiscal commission I co-chaired with former senator Alan Simpson, the Domenici-Rivlin group, the Senate’s “Gang of Six” and the Obama-Boehner negotiations all worked. It’s a package large enough to put the debt on a clear downward path, relative to the economy, and designed well enough to promote, rather than disrupt, economic growth. It’s a package that includes real spending cuts and structural entitlement reforms to make Social Security solvent while slowing the growth of federal health spending while protecting vulnerable populations. And it’s a package that institutes fundamental tax reform that simplifies the code and encourages economic growth by cutting spending in the tax code to reduce rates and generate additional revenue for deficit reduction.
You could get into the weeds here, but the proper response is Fuck You.
Here's why Simpson-Bowles failed: zero American voters wanted any part of it.
Nobody fucking voted for Erskine Bowles, or ever will.