White House deficit commission co-chair Erskine Bowles, whose testimony Republicans cited as the model for their counter-offer to avoid the fiscal cliff, dismissed the GOP proposal.
In a statement Monday afternoon, Bowles, a former Clinton White House chief of staff, said that “circumstances have changed since” his remarks to the super committee in Nov. 2011, during which he offered a set of revenue and spending targets that formed the basis for the Republican offer presented in a letter to the White House today.
“In my testimony before the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, I simply took the mid-point of the public offers put forward during the negotiations to demonstrate where I thought a deal could be reached at that time,” Bowles’ statement said. “The Joint Select Committee failed to reach a deal, and circumstances have changed since then. It is up to negotiators to figure out where the middle ground is today.”
“While I’m flattered the Speaker would call something ‘the Bowles plan,'” he said, “the approach outlined in the letter Speaker Boehner sent to the President does not represent the Simpson-Bowles plan, nor is it the Bowles plan.”
