I called Hoyer’s office this morning to ask if he considers cutting the COLA a benefit cut, but haven’t received a response.

As near as I can tell, the only thing the Gang of Six has made more likely is default. It’s essentially the same deal that Eric Cantor and John Boehner rejected because it included tax increases. Maybe the increases are so vague and the abolition of the alternative minimum tax so attractive that this changes the perception among House Republicans, but I’m not sure why we should believe that. This is the group that passed the Cut, Cap and Balance Act yesterday, for a frame of reference. Indeed, John Boehner’s office said the plan “appears to fall short” of House goals.

A “plan” entails laying out specifically what policies you all agree to change. Saying you told someone else to work out basically every important detail at a later time isn’t a plan. It’s grandstanding. It is just another form of the magic asterisk trick we have used in the past so politicians can pretend they have reached an agreement on really big numbers without actually doing anything.

Okay, that’s not true. Peter Peterson has not promised to give up anything, but he will stand to gain tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in additional pocket change over the next decade thanks to the Senate Gang of Six’s new tax breaks.

By capping spending and forcing cuts the Gang of Six proposal is short on details but it is long on the chances it will cause a economic depression. It will impose a 2/3 super majority to raise spending, which means that not only would the Recovery Act not have passed, but neither would have the New Deal.

The Gang of 6 announces they have reached a deal, and the President is praising it.

Democrats were willing to cut $400 billion from Medicare, Coburn wanted another $130 billion lopped off. Not a pretty picture.

Bipartisan fetishists everywhere poured a little out, after Sen. Tom Coburn quit the Gang of Six deficit reduction talks. The impasse, according to Coburn, came over entitlement cuts.

The Gang of Six simply didn’t finish the job, and indeed, it was built to not finish the job, with Republicans desirous to drag out talks so Senate Democrats looked like they didn’t have a plan. In this sense it was no different than the Max Baucus-led Gang of Six on the health care law. So Conrad is becoming the Gang of One. He’s basically carrying Bowles-Simpson.

Today the Congress returned to session for a month in which the Treasury Department is expected to reach the debt limit. They may be able to take extraordinary measures to keep under the limit for a while, but it’s likely that under normal conditions, the limit will be reached this month. Joe Biden will open a discussion between the parties on how to get a vote passed to increase the limit this week.