A Public Service Reminder: Simpson-Bowles Is Terrible by Paul Krugman
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/30-4
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
Nate Silver gives Mitt Romney a 16 percent chance of winning, and gives Republicans a 22 percent chance of taking the Senate. A month is an eternity in politics, it aint over until its over, yada yada, but the main suspense right now is whether the Democrats can retake the House Im eagerly waiting for Nates take.
And what this means is that in DC thoughts are turning to
Simpson Bowles.
You know what will happen if the expected result materializes and Obama is reelected: all the Very Serious People will clamor for him to return to the pursuit of a Grand Bargain, built around S-B.
So, a public service reminder: Simpson-Bowles is terrible. It mucks around with taxes, but is obsessed with lowering marginal rates despite a complete absence of evidence that this is important. It offers nothing on Medicare that isnt already in the Affordable Care Act. And it raises the Social Security retirement age because life expectancy has risen completely ignoring the fact that life expectancy has only gone up for the well-off and well-educated, while stagnating or even declining among the people who need the program most.