“The extreme right and the extreme left will savage our final product – whatever it may be.”

[quiet.american]

Well, Obama's "Fiscal Commission" is revving up now. With the words "raise taxes" being bandied about by some on the commission, I found Simpson's quote "“The extreme right and the extreme left will savage our final product – whatever it may be” to be realistic, to say the least. But it *is* encouraging that Andy Stern "a union guy" is right at the table, too, and working with Tom Coburn, of all people. Of course, whatever it is they're working on, no doubt Coburn will turn right around and disavow it/not vote for it in the end, but at least the unions are part of this process from the start.

Obama Fiscal Commission's Task Likened to 'Giving Dry Birth to a Porcupine'
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/04/obama-fiscal-commissions-task-likened-to-giving-dry-birth-to-a-porcupine.html

“It’s going to be terrible. It's going to be like giving dry birth to a porcupine,” said former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., the panel’s co-chair, following the event.

The 18-member panel, which Simpson co-chairs with former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, is formally known as the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The panel held its first meeting on the third floor of the White House conference center on Lafayette Park. Before the commission’s meeting got underway, President Obama met with panel members in the Roosevelt Room and made remarks in the Rose Garden.

Former CBO director Robert Reischauer, who now heads the Urban Institute, told the panel that there are no easy solutions.

“Don’t waste time looking for silver bullets or new approaches to hold out the promise of painless sacrifice,” said Reischauer. “You’re going to have to raise taxes. You’re going to have to cut spending. It’s going to have to hurt.”