Steyn: ‘Gang of Six’ Plan 'Total Joke'

The compromise plan that the so-called “Gang of Six” in the Senate is proposing to solve the debt-ceiling crisis is a “total joke” that shows nothing but contempt for the American people, Mark Steyn writes in The Corner column at National Review Online.

“Even if you take seriously their figure of $3.7 trillion in savings over ten years, that represents a clawback across a decade of about two years of current deficits,” Steyn writes.

“If you take Jeff Sessions’s figure of $1.2 trillion in savings over ten years as being closer to the mark, that takes a decade to reverse about three-quarters of the 2011 deficit.

“Neither of these numbers is sufficient,” he writes, adding: “Both lead to national suicide.”

Steyn also decried the plan’s touting a half- trillion dollars in immediate “aggressive deficit reduction.”

“Obviously it’s appealing to Democrats: It accepts their view that 25 percent of GDP should be the new baseline for national . . . government spending. But what’s in it for Republicans?” he writes.