Remember Bowles-Simpson?  The commission that was supposed to come up with a bipartisan debt reduction plan which would enable the country to “get its fiscal house in order”?  The commission that was the darling of all Very Serious People inside the Beltway because it would provide, in its infinite wisdom, a Grand Bargain to save the country?  The commission whose unofficial debt plan (unofficial because it didn’t have enough support within the committee itself to get its official stamp of approval) had a whopping 23% popular support and, when turned into a bill, went down 382-38 in the House?  Well, the Bowles-Simpson commission is gone but, thanks to sequestration, apparently the search for a Grand Bargain is all the rage amongst Very Serious People again.   For all of those not in the know, as it currently stands the Grand Bargain = cut Social Security and Medicare benefits and “tax reform”.  Here’s Alex Pareene on what’s on the table:

Cuts to [Social Security and Medicare] have been offered, repeatedly, by the president, to Republicans. Republicans, thus far, have pretended not to notice, because their parallel news media misinforms them and because they incorrectly believe the president to be insincere in his desire to hack away at those very popular and successful programs. The recent Obama charm offensive is designed to convince Republicans that he is very sincere in his efforts to get a Serious Debt Deal, involving “entitlement” cuts and tax reform.

Here’s a fun secret: Tax reform (in this case referring to eliminating or scaling back “tax expenditures”) is technically a conservative policy priority, even if elected Republicans refuse to ever support it for real. This is a compromise in which conservative policy is being offered in exchange for conservative support for a conservative policy. The sequester and Obama’s Bargain quest mean that Republicans can choose between allowing a Democrat to “take credit” for cutting the two most popular programs in the country or they can just live with the already-passed government spending cut that they are also able to blame on the president. Because the party’s “brand” is effectively beyond tarnishing, and because they are still guaranteed control of the House and veto power in the Senate for the foreseeable future, their bargaining position is actually much stronger than even they seem to realize.

But bless the Republicans for being totally insincere in their deficit hysteria. If they actually did care, as opposed to using it as a bizarre excuse for opposing all tax increases, we’d have had a crappy long-term debt deal by now, in the middle of our pitiful “economic recovery.”

There’s the thing, if the Republicans just wait him out a little bit Obama is almost certain to offer up an even crappier plan more to their liking.  It would be difficult to overstate how much this disgusts me.