ECONOMY - Deficit Commission Update

"Simpson and Bowles: Era of 'Deficit Denials' Is Over"
PBS Newshour 12/1/2010

Something I didn't know:

Excerpt

ALAN SIMPSON, co-chairman, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility And Reform: What we do is get rid of $1 trillion---$100 billion tax expenditures which we call tax earmarks. Every year, that's what it is. The majority go to the top 1 percent income people in the United States. Four hundred people, the wealthiest people in the United States, pay only 16 percent income tax.

And all we're saying is, we're going to get rid of that. And guess what, guys? We're going to give you a tax rate of 8 percent up to $70,000, and 13 percent, 14 percent up to $210,000, and anything over 23 -- 23 percent over everything that you earn.

Now, if a guy can't figure that as being -- if that's a tax increase, I'm on the moon, and not in the Russell Rotunda.

Bold-blue emphasis mine

UPDATE

"Majority on Fiscal Commission Back Debt Reduction Plan" By JACKIE CALMES, New York Times 12/3/2010

Excerpt

To the surprise of even its members, a bipartisan majority of President Obama’s debt-reduction commission declared their support on Friday for a package that would reduce projected deficits by $4 trillion over the coming decade through major spending cuts and tax increases.

The outcome, with 11 of 18 members backing the plan, was short of the 14-vote supermajority required to send the plan to Congress for action under the terms of Mr. Obama’s executive order last February establishing the commission. Even so, panel members of both parties, and opponents of the plan as well as supporters, said as they voted that the package would be what Representative Xavier Becerra, a Democratic opponent from California, called “a template” for future action.