McConnell-Reid Debt Plan Includes Catfood Commission II with Teeth

Since Harry Reid is now on board, it’s looking more and more likely that the so-called “McConnell Plan” is the one the villagers favor in order to get the debt ceiling raised. Naturally, that is the plan that will allow Republicans to blame the President for raising the debt ceiling while continuing to procrastinate on dealing with the deficit. From ABC News:

This proposal has not yet been the subject of a lot of interest by House Republicans, but there are signs it may be gaining “traction,” according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. “What is emerging as the most likely outcome is a plan based on Messrs. McConnell and Reid’s work, a Democratic official familiar with negotiations said,” the Journal’s Carol E. Lee and Janet Hook report. “It would include roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction, but would not come with tax increases or Medicare savings, the official said. It could include an extension of unemployment insurance, the official said, which costs $40 billion and would be offset by spending cuts.” http://on.wsj.com/p3l6u3

The problem for us ordinary citizens who have to live with whatever Congress decides, is that McConnell’s plan includes the establishment of a sequel to the Catfood Commission that is scarier than the first one.

The McConnell Plan: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would allow the debt ceiling to be raised by the president, with Congress voting disapprovingly three times before the 2012 election. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and McConnell are talking about creating a deficit commission that, like the base closing commission, would issue legislation that would be voted on up or down. They’re also discussing attaching spending cuts to the plan.

Greg Sargent quotes {shudder} Larry Kudlow on what the new Catfood Commission would be able to do.

Larry Kudlow, who’s plugged in with Congressional Republicans, scoops a key new detail about the emerging Mitch McConnell proposal to transfer control of the debt ceiling to the president:

McConnell is negotiating now with Sen. Harry Reid for a large-scale package that will allow the debt ceiling to rise unless overturned by a two-thirds vote. If a White House debt-ceiling deal comes through with $1.5 trillion of spending cuts, that will be part of the package. Right now, it’s not completed because enforceable spending caps have not been determined.

The key part of the new McConnell package is a joint committee to review entitlements in a massive deficit-reduction package. Unlike the Bowles-Simpson commission, this committee will be mandated to have a legislative outcome — an actual vote — that will occur early next year. No White House members. Evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. No outsiders. This will be the first time such a study would have an expedited procedure mandated with no amendments permitted. Also, tax reform could be air-dropped into this committee’s report.

A source with knowledge of the emerging proposal confirms to me that while nothing has been finalized, this is where the discussions are headed.

If I’m reading this right, what this means is that in order to make the McConnell proposal more palatable to conservatives, there would be a mandated bipartisan review of entitlements next year. The source tells me that if a majority of the committee can agree on recommendations for entitlement reform, the proposal would also mandate a Congressional vote on those recommendations.

So efforts to gut Social Security and Medicare will be postponed, but far from dead. And Congress will have to take up or down votes on the Catfood legislation–meaning no amendments permitted. We are so F’d.