Thursday Morning: Another “Accountability before Austerity” post.

Paul Krugman was one of the many people who looked at the details of the Deficit Reduction Commission’s proposals and called the writers “Unserious People”:

OK, let’s say goodbye to the deficit commission. If you’re sincerely worried about the US fiscal future — and there’s good reason to be — you don’t propose a plan that involves large cuts in income taxes. Even if those cuts are offset by supposed elimination of tax breaks elsewhere, balancing the budget is hard enough without giving out a lot of goodies — goodies that fairly obviously, even without having the details, would go largely to the very affluent.

I have to agree with Krugman that these proposals are crazy but I am under no illusion that the people who want to avoid paying their obligations to the rest of us are going to pretty much get what they want.  We’ve seen this act before.  It would be a mistake to not take them very, VERY seriously.