Deficit Thinking

Jon Chait slams the joint Judd Gregg (R-NH)/Kent Conrad (D-NE) proposed commission on reducing the deficit, which comes laden with a bunch of new supermajority requirements effectively guaranteeing its recommendations go nowhere:

To say that this procedure "is designed to get results" shows a very odd understanding of American political institutions. Conrad and Gregg seem to think that instituting major reforms in the public interest is rare because the threshold for passing legislation is too low. Thus they've designed a process that creates new and higher supermajority requirements, on an issue where getting even 51% to sign on is probably impossible. And if that fails, maybe they'll conclude the process was too easy. Next time they could also require the commission members to create a cold fusion reactor or retrieve a magical ring from inside a volcano.

My favorite part of the above quote, specifically, its example of retrieving a magical ring from the volcano, is that it casts the commissioners as members of the Nazgul.