Let me preface this by acknowledging that the fiscal commission quickly devolved from a questionable White House initiative into a clown show, and that, beyond the small population of DC-based “deficit hawks,” you’d be hard pressed to find anybody in America who thinks it was productive, or a wise political exercise, or whatever.
But 11 out of 18 votes is actually a lot of votes. And as a microcosm of the sorts of people who will ultimately make these sorts of spending and revenue decisions, it’s worth recognizing that, in the years ahead, we’re much more likely to see Congress addressing deficits under something like the Bowles-Simpson model, rather than the Jan Schakowsky model (neither of which really tackles health care, which is really the only part of this equation that matters).
This is just an educated guess, but I’d imagine that the Schakowsky plan would’ve garnered about four of 18 votes on this commission.
