There Was No Bowles-Simpson Commission Report #4567

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There Was No Bowles-Simpson Commission Report #4567

Monday, 02 January 2012 02:25

For some reason many people in the policy community feel the need to assert that the deficit commission chaired by Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson produced a report. It did not. The two co-chairs produced a report, which was never submitted for a formal vote since it did not have the support of the necessary majority.

Therefore Christine Romer, the former head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), was mistaken when she referred to the report of the commission. This is simply the report of the co-chairs.

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Were the Co-Chairs Authorized to Issue a Report?
written by Paul, January 02, 2012 11:44 AM

I have never seen any analysis of the authority under which Simpson and Bowles issued their report. If they simply acted on their own, then their report has no force whatsoever and is a fraudulent attempt to usurp the powers of the Commission. Since they misrepresented everything else about their findings, their usurpation would hardly be a surprise.

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About Beat the Press

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of several books, his latest being The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. Read more about Dean.

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