Any deficit reduction plan that is not focused mostly on reforming health care is simply not serious about fixing the true roots of our long-term deficit.

This is a terrible plan. And the authors know it. That’s why they’re not having a vote on it today, because nobody likes it. I don’t know if they get to 10, the threshold for Reid to hold a vote. And even if they do, this package is political dynamite, it doesn’t look Constitutional in many places with the binding of future Congresses, and without amendment I think you lose enough Republicans so that this could never get 60 votes.

The Washington Post, which long ago abandoned rules of journalistic objectivity in pushing its agenda for cutting Social Security and Medicare, today covered up the plans by deficit commission’s co-chairs to violate the commission’s charter. The Post reported that the commission expects to delay voting on a plan until December 3. This means that the commission will miss the December 1 deadline for a final report specified in both its by-laws and its charter.

For most of the week, you could see the wheels coming off of the Catfood Commission. First we heard that “they may surprise us,” but then there was this moving of the goalposts. Despite the fact that 14 of the 18 panel members had to agree to secure any recommendations which would go to Congress for a vote, now insiders were saying that a majority vote would show a signal of support.

But it’s clear that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson can’t even get that.

The Century Foundation, Demos and the Economic Policy Institute have released a liberal counterpoint budget plan, as a response to the plan put forward by Erskine Bowles and Alan “The Greediest Generation” Simpson on deficit reduction. The counterpoint is fundamentally different in that it demands increased employment levels before spending reductions kick in.

The latest leak out of the Catfood Commission is that the participants just can’t seem to agree on anything, with just 11 days to go until their report is due.

The purpose of raising the retirement age, we’re told, is to increase cat food sales save money and put Social Security on a path to long-term solvency. But the bean-counting geniuses Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson didn’t take one thing into account: it could actually cost more to the system if people go on disability in those later years because they’re unable to work. And this wasn’t the National Hippies Foundation who made this assessment, it was the Government Accountability Office.

The projected spike in disability claims could harm Social Security’s finances because disability benefits typically are higher than early retirement payments, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

You need to start saving to protect your retirement from the Catfood Commission.

The basic difference between Schakowsky’s plan and Bowles-Simpson is not that it relies more on revenue-raisers than spending cuts – although conservatives will surely highlight this – but who bears the brunt of the pain.

We definitely needed another greybeard panel to tell us all to sacrifice to “get our fiscal house in order.” And that’s what we got today, with the Domenici-Rivlin Bipartisan Policy Center report on debt reduction. Pete Domenici is the former Republican Senator from New Mexico who at the end liked to walk around Congress in his pajamas; Alice Rivlin is the deficit scold Democrat who’s a member of the Catfood Commission, providing a report that is basically similar to the Bowles-Simpson report.