Even the title of the Politico piece about their new plan-they gave a speech to Politico, says it all. "Simpson-Bowles Trying to Get Back in the Mix."
"Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are back at it, pushing the White House and congressional Republicans to get off the partisan sidelines and strike a deal that can keep government debt in check.
"Simpson said Obama’s legacy is at risk if he fails to address the national debt and deficit.
I don't know what's more tiresome: the exaggerated sense of their own relevance of these two gentlemen or the exaggerated sense of relevance the Very Serious Pundits have of them. Ezra Klein looks at how Simpson really has very little ability to discuss policy beyond some supposedly clever "shtick":
“I always say to people,” Alan Simpson told NBC’s Chuck Todd, “before you, you know begin to drool at the mouth, and go crazy and scratch our eyeballs out, read the damn report. It was 67 pages, we put it in December 1, 2010 and people said, “What are you doing to the vulnerable?” And I said, read it. We don’t do anything to people on SSI, we don’t do anything with food stamp, we don’t do anything with people on — on unemployment. Get — get your — use your bean, instead of listening to crap all day long from the right, and the left.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/20/the-problem-with-alan-simpson/
Notice he doesn't say he does nothing to Medicare. In fact he does do quite a lot to Social Security:
"The question, in case you were wondering, was “what do you say to those folks who don’t have the comfort of a pension? That don’t have a good job that they can get employed at all the way through the age of 70, say? How do you deal with that?”
"Simpson’s answer, meanwhile, was no answer at all. It was just schtick. It does nothing to, say, rebut the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which took a close look at the changes Simpson-Bowles made to Social Security and concluded that the proposal “would generate nearly two-thirds of its Social Security savings over 75 years — and four-fifths of its savings in the 75 th year — from benefit cuts,” and that “while these benefit cuts would be largest for workers with above-average earnings, they would affect the vast majority of retired and disabled workers.”
The vaunted Simpson-Bowles plan does little but cut benefits:
"Some provisions of Bowles-Simpson’s Social Security proposal have merit. But the package as a whole is not well-designed, cuts benefits excessively, harms many low- and moderate-income workers, and radically alters the program’s earnings-replacement philosophy."
"Social Security reform deserves a debate on its own merits, with policymakers paying careful attention to its impacts on beneficiaries, taxpayers, and other programs such as SSI. Bowles-Simpson shows the pitfalls of drafting a reform package hurriedly as part of an overall deficit-reduction effort. It does not represent a sound “starting point” for Social Security reform."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3402
While the problems it faces are overblown, one obvious idea that they don't consider at all is to either raise or eliminate the cap on Social Security taxes. That would be better than all these other ideas and not cut anyones benefits.
Still, the frustration of the duo is welcome. Krugman recently spoke of "welcome signs of desperation."
“The idea of a grand bargain is at best on life support,” Bowles told reporters at a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast, where he and Simpson discussed a new debt-reduction proposal they unveiled Tuesday."
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