When millions of dollars are being pumped into Washington by anti-government and anti-tax ideologues, you're bound to find Democrats willing to play along. And when your Washington press corps can't be bothered to get even the smallest details right — well, that must mean the Bowles-Simpson Medicine Show is back in town.

It's here, folks. Journalists are still cooing over a failed proposal they're calling "moderate" and "centrist," based on the radical and unpopular plan put forward by two individuals named Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles.

Another budget, one that's both economically sound and more politically popular, was summarily dismissed by the same media as "partisan" and extreme.

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This deficit supercommittee may very well blow up in Obama's face. At the time the deal was made, the administration and Congress were successfully pushing the "OMG, we need to save the country from the BIG BAD DEFICIT!!!!" narrative. Now, not so much. Instead, thanks to Occupy Wall Street, the economy and the effect it's had on the 99% is dominating the news cycle, and should continue to do so indefinitely.

So when these handmaidens of the 1% come out with their wonderful new austerity plan, I suspect the response will be very, very negative:

WASHINGTON — With just five weeks until its deadline, a secretive Congressional committee seeking ways to cut the federal deficit is far from a consensus, and party leaders may need to step in if they want to ensure agreement, say people involved in the panel’s work.

The 12-member committee is just over halfway through the 76-day interval from its first meeting to the date its final report is due on Nov. 23, but has not gained much traction. The lawmakers have not agreed on basic elements like a benchmark against which savings will be measured.

The panel’s members, evenly divided between the two parties, spent most of September in a standoff. Republicans refused to budge from their position against new taxes. Democrats said they would not discuss cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare unless Republicans made a firm commitment to accept additional revenues.

The two leaders of the panel, Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, have told committee members not to talk publicly about their work. But other lawmakers and Congressional aides privy to the panel’s effort have provided a remarkably consistent picture of the deliberations as the committee tries, in a matter of weeks, to find fiscal answers that have eluded Congress and the White House for years.

A Republican who has worked on Capitol Hill for more than two decades said: “Basically we are going in circles. It’s going very, very slowly. The only way this will work is if the leaders decide they want to get a deal and lay down parameters. Everybody is sitting around sucking their thumb until they get some guidance on what to do.”

And just to keep it interesting, they will have to defend any dots the 99% connect between their recommendations and their latest campaign contributions:

Members of the congressional committee charged with making one of the most sensitive economic decisions facing America, a $1.2tn cut in the federal budget, have received a series of donations from the defence, pharmaceutical, oil and other industries, figures have revealed.

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I heard two different talking heads yesterday say that President Obama had a report from the deficit commission that he didn't follow. Dean Baker explains why that's a crock:

I know we are not supposed to say "lie" in Washington, but this is really get tiresome. There was no report from President Obama's deficit commission. The rules under which the commission could issue a report were very clear. It had to have the support of 14 of the 18 members in a vote that took place by December 1, 2010. There was no vote taken by that date, although 12 of the 18 members did indicate their support for a report produced by the commission co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, on December 2.

This means that there was no commission report. Therefore, when Dan Balz tells Washington Post readers about the recommendations of the deficit commission, he either has no clue what he is talking about or he is deliberately deceiving Washington Post readers. If he wants to be honest, he is welcome to refer to it as a report of the co-chairs and to even point out that the report had support of 12 of the 18 commissioners, but it is simply not accurate to describe it as a report of the commission.

Btw, the headline of the piece describes the failure to reach agreement on a big deficit reduction package as a "lost opportunity." Those reading through the piece would find that one element of this lost opportunity is the failure to raise the age of eligibility for Medicare. Wow, just think, if only Speaker Boehner and President Obama could have gotten their act together people aged 65 and 66 could now be paying for their own health care. We're all really going to regret this lost opportunity.

In the aftermath of Friday's budget agreement, it's no longer a question of whether the U.S. is going to slash spending, but where, when and by how much. On the heels of the $38.5 billion in cuts to discretionary, non-defense spending Obama adviser David Plouffe deemed "draconian", President Obama on Wednesday will lay out his vision for long-term deficit reduction, one likely to include the deeply flawed recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. And with Republicans promising more budgetary blackmail over the debt ceiling and 2012 spending, austerity is the word of the day.

Judging by the grim experience in the UK, that is a very, very bad thing.

The British headlines tell the tale. This week, the BBC reported "UK economy faces 'worrying' times." Meanwhile, the Guardian warned David Cameron's Tory government:

Some of the UK's most prominent business leaders, including individuals who gave their personal stamp of approval to the chancellor's aggressive spending cuts, have said they have growing concerns about the state of the economy, warning of weak growth and rising inflation ahead.

They have good reason to be worried. While U.S. gross domestic product jumped by 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2010, the British economy contracted by half a point. If that dismal performance could be attributed in part to even more dismal weather, the future looks bleak as well.

Last week, the OECD predicted continued sluggish growth for the UK, cutting back its forecasts for the quarter and the year:

In a survey of the G7 economies, the OECD estimated that UK gross domestic product would expand at an annualised rate of 1% in the second quarter.

This compared with an OECD forecast in November of 1.3%.

The OECD said the US economy was expected to expand by 3.4%, followed by France at 2.8% and Germany at 2.3%.

While the UK GDP numbers for the first quarter of 2011 aren't due until April 27, the picture painted by British Chamber of Commerce survey wasn't a pretty one:

"The upturn in Q1 is likely to have been only slightly larger than the decline of 0.5% seen in Q4 2010", when the severe weather caused disruptions, it said.

That would mean output levels were only "marginally higher" than they were before the weather took its toll, it added.

If their economic prospects are diverging, the policy prescriptions of the Democratic Obama administration and the conservative Cameron government have been even more so. Following the $787 billion stimulus program in early 2009, the Carnegie Endowment noted that "U.S. leaders agreed last December to extend tax cuts and enact a payroll-tax holiday that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects will cost 6 percent of 2010 GDP over the next five years." In sharp contrast:

In one of the great surprises of 2010, a new British government announced plans to cut public investment and reduce social spending by £80.5 billion ($131 billion) and enact tax hikes of an additional £29.8 billion ($49 billion) through 2015. The planned reduction in Britain's cyclically adjusted fiscal deficit--nearly 8 percent of GDP from 2010 through 2015--is in line with that of Greece's draconian austerity program and larger than the planned reductions in Ireland (6 percent of GDP), Portugal (6 percent), Spain (3.5 percent), and Italy (1.5 percent) over the same period.

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So I read this piece yesterday in which Digby discussed the notion that Rep. Paul Ryan's Crazy Roadmap to the Future is part of a larger design to make the Catfood Commission recommendations look reasonable:

If I were a conspiracy type, I might even think the catfood salesmen on the commission cooked this whole thing up sometime last December when it was obvious that the liberals weren't going to sign on. But I'm not a conspiracy type so I'd imagine that this is just something they all fortuitously and individually stumbled into on their way to a big donor meeting. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy --- it's just part of the culture. Look at how the Village greeted Ryan today. Cleopatra would be jealous.

Digby might think that's crazy talk, but I don't. That's why I posed that question to Nancy Pelosi on a blogger conference call she held today on the budget. I said that some of us were concerned that the administration was going to use the Ryan budget to make the deficit commission proposals look reasonable, and asked if she'd speak to that.

The response I got wasn't all that reassuring.

"If you subtract Social Security from it, [their proposals] to make it more solvent, that doesn't belong in any discussion about cutting the deficit," she said. "They shouldn't include policy decisions about Social Security. They don’t belong on the same table."

Once you subtract the Social Security proposals, "there are some good things in the deficit commission report."

She pointed out their recommendations include a "very big cut in defense" and in revenue earmarks. "There are features that are very good, not the full package," she said.

Then she said "ninety percent of our focus has to be putting the spotlight on the bad things in their budget."

I got the distinct impression I was being deflected.

I won't argue about the "good things" Leader Pelosi says are left in the deficit commission chairmans proposal after we remove the cuts to Social Security.

There are, indeed, what appears to be some good, practical proposals. But Republicans aren't going to vote for the sensible ideas on their merits. They'll hold them hostage until they also get their wacky right-wing proposals adopted.

And can we drop the political game pieces and get back to reality? Republicans don't care about the deficit. Repeat after me: Republicans don't care about the deficit. Did you hear a peep out of them during the Bush years? Of course not. Because Republicans don't care about the deficit.

This is the same game they've been playing for decades. It's just that this time, they've got the Democrats running the ball for them. In soccer, they call that an "own goal".

From the WSJ's MarketWatch, information about exactly how close the administration came to proposing Social Security cuts. Please note, it wasn't ruled out for good -- but only put on the back burner.

As Digby points out again and again, the Republicans will have no problem cooperating with the Democrats on cutting Social Security -- and then turning around and slamming us in the teeth with it in the 2012 elections, just like they did in the mid-terms:

The White House last month considered offering specific benefit cuts and tax increases to shore up Social Security's finances, but ultimately decided to back off.

Officials weighed suggesting that Congress raise the ceiling on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax and allow benefits to rise more slowly than under current law, according to three people familiar with the deliberations. The hope was to engage Republicans in talks.

But aides decided against putting forward the ideas, sure to be unpopular, without a clear signal from Republicans that they were ready to talk. As a result, the budget President Barack Obama will release Monday won't include any specific proposals to alter Social Security.

"It doesn't make sense for us to come out and say, 'We're going to do it this way,' and get pilloried," said one person familiar with the conversations. "We have to do it together."

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Looks like the Obama administration has now brought on just about everyone of any import from the Clinton administration, except the one we wish he had: Robert Reich. And while theoretically, it may not be deeply significant that the head of the DLC and former head of the Catfood Commission (the same strategist who's pushing to cut Social Security) is Joe Biden's new chief of staff, it would be disingenuous to pretend he won't have any influence:

When President Obama named Bill Daley his new chief of staff, there was muted grumbling on the left. Daley, a banker and commerce secretary under Bill Clinton, had publicly criticized the Democratic Party and Obama administration for governing too far from the left. But his appointment was not presented as an ideological repositioning so much as a pragmatic choice. At the time, many liberals—in the words of Robert Kuttner, the coeditor of The American Prospect and a fellow at Demos, a progressive think tank—saved their fire for bigger potential fights to come, especially potential cuts to Social Security benefits.

Now the administration is bringing in one of the architects of the proposal to cut Social Security benefits and other domestic programs: Bruce Reed, who has been named chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden.

Reed recently served as executive director of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which Obama created to fashion a bipartisan compromise on long-term deficit reduction, and is also known as the Bowles-Simpson Commission, after its co-chairs. The commission report was criticized on the left for agreeing to what liberals considered arbitrary and unnecessary limits on domestic discretionary spending.

"Reed is someone who has been very open for a long time in his desire to see Social Security and Medicare rolled back," says Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

Putting Reed in charge of Biden's shop is especially troubling to some economic liberals because Biden is viewed as a relative populist among the administration's top players, and Jared Bernstein, the most left-leaning economic adviser in the White House, works for Biden.

And while chief of staff to the vice president is far from the most influential policymaking role in the administration, Reed's selection, especially coming on the heels of Daley's, may be a signal that the White House is taking more a more conservative tack on economic policy. "By itself, his appointment is not a big deal, since this is not a top-level position," says Baker, "but in the context of the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations and other recent appointments, this is not good news from the standpoint of people who value these programs."

Another mark against Reed for the left: he is the CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC, long an object of scorn for the Democratic Party's left wing, is a centrist think tank that was associated with the Clinton-era party's "New Democrat" reinvention. Reed served as a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration. Colleagues of Reed's say that he will be loyal to whatever political direction Obama sets. "Bruce is a very smart man with his own policy views, but he’s also a team player as I think he demonstrated during the Clinton administration," says Ed Kilgore, managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, who worked with Reed at the DLC.

I was being interviewed by Cenk on the Young Turks the other day and we spoke about the Cat Food Commission. I told him that it's unfathomable if any cuts to Social Security benefit cuts happened while a Democratic President was in charge. He agreed completely. It would be devastating to the American population and to the Democratic Party.

mcjoan@Dkos has a post up about a new poll conducted by Lake Research Partners on The Cat Food Commission and Social Security..

Overall, of the 1,200 likely voters surveyed, 82% of respondents oppose Social Security cuts to reduce the deficit, including 83% of Dems, 78% of Independents, 82% of Republicans, and 74% of Tea Party supporters.

The implications for Democrats are serious.

• According to national exit poll data, Democrats lost seniors by historic proportions—21 points—in the November mid‐terms. Even in 1994, Democrats only lost seniors by 2 points.
• The survey reveals Democrats no longer have the advantage they traditionally have enjoyed on Social Security. However, candidates who made Social Security an issue often saved their seats, and voters who say Social Security was a top voting issue voted more for Democratic candidates.
• As we have seen in previous work, voters see little relationship between the deficit and Social Security.
• Voters strongly oppose cutting Social Security benefits, even under the rationales of reducing the deficit or making the program more solvent in the long run. They strongly oppose cutting benefits for those earning above $60,000, and they strongly oppose raising the retirement age to 69 years‐old. This includes voters of all ages and partisan groups, including Republicans and Tea Party supporters.
• There is also strong bipartisan support for lifting the cap to impose Social Security taxes on all wages above $106,800. Support for this is stronger when both employers and employees are taxed.

...Social Security was a particularly important voting issue for independents who voted for a Democrat in this election, voters aged 65 to 74, and older voters who are women, independent, moderate, white and African American.

Democrats cannot afford to lose these demographic groups. That's the simple political calculus. The policy calculus, is that Democrats cannot betray their moral center and be the party responsible for consigning Americans to an old age of poverty and struggle.

The American people of all political stripes want one thing for certain. Their Social Security and the deficit be damned. If this were to actually take place, no matter how many Alan Simpson gasbags that the administration wheeled out from the right to praise the courage it took to cut Social Security to reduce the federal debt, the right wing noise machine would suddenly pivot and become the party that always believed in it and actually created the program. They would hijack the greatest social program ever created under FDR and the Democratic Party would be in ruins. I'm sick even having to discuss this thought.

Andrea Mitchell tries to push the Beltway fetish with our "aging population", just so working-class Americans turn out to be the folks who have to make a sacrifice when it comes to solving the deficit. We're the people who have to make the painful choices and not oh, people like Andrea Mitchell.

John Irons of the EPI sets her straight when it comes to the lie that the media are trying to spread, claiming that since Americans are living longer, the retirement age should go up, which would mean a huge cut in our Social Security benefits.

AM: What about raising the retirement age eventually to 68? What would be wrong with that actuarily, we're all living longer. Eventually something is going to have to be done?

JI: Well I think a couple of things. One, we're not all living longer. People who are wealthy, who have higher incomes, are living much longer. People who have moderate incomes, low incomes, aren't living that much longer. And I think with the retirement age, what that rally means is a cut in benefits...what this really means is an across-the-board benefit cut. if you look at all their proposals for Social Security, it means a reduction for 80% of the population.....for most people this would be a severe cut in their Social Security benefits.

Irons does a great job of repeating it over and over again because the Villagers need to hear it so it sticks in their brains.

The wealthy overlords live longer, but we , their hapless underlings, must face "austerity" while they party. The Masters of the Universe would love this. They destroy our economy and we foot the bill while they get 144 billion dollars of record bonuses and we all need to work until we're almost 70 before we can get a dime of our money.

Digby also catches an early moment during the broadcast when Mrs. Greenspan gets up in arms because Nancy Pelosi isn't falling for the Cat-Food Commission recommendations.

Glad to see the unions keeping the heat on the banks over Social Security (and mortgage foreclosures, too, as in the above video). Remember, there's probably a Morgan Stanley office near you -- why not join the fun yourself?

[Yesterday] more than 150 members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) protested the deficit commission's proposed cuts to Social Security outside of the DC offices of Morgan Stanley. One might ask, why did union members protest outside of a big bank's office when it is the President's commission that is proposing to cut Social Security?

UE Director of Organization Bob Kingsley had the answer. "We are gathered here at the scene of the crime," Kingsley said. "Morgan Stanley and the other big banks are the source of the plan to privatize and cut Social Security."

Union members also noted that Erskine Bowles sits on the board of Morgan Stanley. Erskine Bowles is co-chair of the bi-partisan "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform," whose mandate is to find ways to reduce the federal deficit, but which has instead made Social Security its primary target. According to liberal activists, the deficit commission is widely expected to come out with recommendations after the election - too late for voters to have a say - and to call for raising the retirement age to 70 and other cuts in Social Security benefits.

In the late 1990s, Bowles served as President Clinton's White House chief of staff. Bowles negotiated with Newt Gingrich a plan to partially privatize Social Security. That deal fell apart in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal when Republicans called for Clinton's impeachment according to Steven Gillon, author of The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. A decade later, Erskine Bowles has been assigned to the Deficit Commision in order to build support among his former Democratic colleagues for cutting Social Security in order to lower the deficit.