"Simpson-Bowles is Magic"

Via Brad Delong and Paul Krugman, I've come to this excellent article at Salon by Alex Pareene on how the Simpson-Bowles economic plan works. It's so simple, I wish I had known this sooner. I must quote at length:

Not many people know this but “The Simpson-Bowles Plan” is magic. It is whatever you want it to be. It will fix the deficit and grow the economy and it does it without raising taxes on anyone, unless you want to raise taxes on some people, and then it does that. It cuts all government spending but in a way that doesn’t hurt Medicare or The Troops. If you stand in front of a mirror and say “Simpson-Bowles” three times David Gergen and Gloria Borger appear out of nowhere and praise your wisdom and seriousness. “The Simpson-Bowles Plan” gives you Your Country Back and makes it the ’90s again, or the ’50s, or whatever past decade you wish it was, when things were better. Simpson and Bowles were two kindly wizards and they granted America three wishes but dumb Washington, D.C., is too Partisan to make the wishes. Obama and the Republicans need to Grow Up and Get Serious and Pass “The Simpson-Bowles Plan,” everyone in America agrees.

That is basically the way the press and most of Washington talk about the deficit, the “fiscal cliff” and the deficit reduction “framework” endorsed by two old white guys named Simpson and Bowles. No one actually knows or cares what’s in the actual Simpson-Bowles plan, but at this point it doesn’t actually matter. Here’s Fred Barnes counseling Republicans to endorse Simpson-Bowles despite the fact that it includes the expiration of all Bush tax cuts, a thing he does not support. Here’s reasonable old David Gergen warning that Democrats are overreaching by asking for more than $1 trillion in new revenue, and invoking Simpson-Bowles yet again as an example of the Proper Way to do a Grand Bargain. Simpson-Bowles includes more than $2 trillion in new revenue.

The smarter Republicans have long since figured out that the entire deficit “debate” is an elaborate farce, which is why John Boehner just pretended to be offering something called “The Bowles Plan,” though it was not actually a plan authored or endorsed by Mr. Bowles. Mitt Romney kept saying he loved the Simpson-Bowles Plan, though of course he would never have actually signed it into law had be been elected. (Not that it ever would’ve passed Congress!) He “had his own plan,” which was probably going to be tax cuts and more defense spending. ...

Pareene goes on and on. It's excellent.  I wished I had realized that Simpson-Bowles is magic, like Christianity. Dang. It works so well now.