The American Spectator

PFarthing| 11.3.11 @ 2:52PM

Those are some quite reasonable suggestions, actually. The catch is that most of them are suggestions for which the Dems would pay a high political cost. How are you going to get them to go to their supporters saying they agreed to lowering the cost of living adjustments, for example, an idea very unpopular with certain powerful Dem supporting groups, and they didn't get any concessions from the Republican side in return?

I'm not saying that lowering the COLA isn't a good idea, just that it's hard to see how it could easily be done in the current polarized, partisan climate. It would be like your liberal counterpart somewhere saying that the supercommittee could "easily" meet its mandate by raising taxes.

BTW I'm intrigued by your claim that the accounting reform by Sessions and Snow would save money. When are you going to post about that?

Quin| 11.3.11 @ 4:36PM

probably next week. (Sessions' office says that accounting gimmicks since 2005 covered up $357 billion of spending.)

PFarthing| 11.3.11 @ 4:53PM

"Sessions' office says that accounting gimmicks since 2005 covered up $357 billion of spending."

That's more like what I expected. So disallowing the gimmick would *increase* the budget bottom line, in this case by $357B. And in fact since it was just a gimmick the actual spending isn't really increasing, just being reported more accurately.

Getting rid of accounting gimmicks is a great idea, I just didn't understand how that was going to save money as you said in your article.