Today, the Center for American Progress released a plan to get specific on our growing deficits and debt. Or, rather, they've released five illustrative plans, specifically endorsing one--the 50/50 plan--as a balanced compromise.

In a Heritage Foundation analysis of the President's Fiscal Commission's final plan, Brian Riedl argues that the recommendations have "too much taxes, not enough spending cuts." Riedl takes issue with the Fiscal Commission's claim that the primary (before interest) savings are split between 65 percent spending cuts and 35 percent tax increases.

The co-chairs of the President's fiscal commission today released the deficit reduction plan that members will be asked to vote on Friday.

President Obama announced today that he is freezing federal pay for the next two years. This action will save $60 billion over the next ten years, and about $2 billion for the remainder of FY 2011.

For about a week now, we've been telling critics of the Co-Chairs' Plan to throw ideas, not stones. So, good for Jan Schakowsky.

The drumbeat for action to reduce our long-term debt continues. Today the Debt Reduction Task Force of the Bipartisan Policy Center issued its recommendations on ways to put the United States on a sound fiscal course. The bipartisan panel was chaired by former Senator Pete V. Domenici and former CBO and OMB director Alice Rivlin. CRFB President Maya MacGuineas also served on the task force.

Continuing our analysis of the President’s Fiscal Commission Draft Report, let's look at what the Co-Chair proposal does on the spending side of the budget.

Overall, the proposal identifies $2.2 trillion in spending savings from 2012-2020, with about $730 billion coming from mandatory programs and about $1.5 trillion from discretionary programs, relative to the President's FY 2011 budget request.

On the discretionary budget, the Co-Chairs propose:

In a move much earlier than we expected, the Co-Chairs of the White House Fiscal Commission released their plan on how to get control of our national debt. The proposal is a drastic change from our current fiscal course and should be a document of great significance in the fiscal policy discourse. Before we get into specifics, we should point out that this is not the plan--14 out of 18 Commission members still have to agree to the recommendations.

Noted economist Brad DeLong is asking: where are the technocrats of the center? In a recent blog post, he laments the lack of a concrete plan among more centrist technocrats to get the economy going in the near-term while, at the same time leaving it better off in the long-run. He outlined a seven-point plan to accomplish this goal:

The Heritage Foundation recently came out with a detailed paper with over $300 billion in spending cuts that can be put in place in FY 2012.