So Obama's Magical Deficit Reduction Commission is a Go

And former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson will be the co-chairman.

I think that it's a bad idea in the first place, and that it's a way to create political cover for weakening Social Security and Medicare, and what's more, as former Clinton Treasury official Brad Delong notes, putting Simpson in charge of deficit reduction is like naming an, "Arsonist to Co-Run the Fire Department," with history of supporting every half-assed tax cut for the rich plan out there, supporting Reagan's disastrous 1981 cuts, and opposing Clinton's tax increases, which produced the first surpluses in a generation.

What really worries me is that we have a whole bunch of Beltway Boyz who are thinking that the huge problem is Social Security and Medicare, and are looking for a way to gut them.