Dust-up at The Washington Post

cjr.org — This weekend the Internet was all a-twitter over a piece that The Washington Post ran right before New Year’s, headlined: “Support grows for tackling nation’s debt.” The story, produced by a new publication called The Fiscal Times, was laced with quotes supporting a new bipartisan commission, proposed by Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), with broad power to cut federal spending and increase taxes—in other words, to make government leaner by reforming the tax code and curbing outlays for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are the social programs that eat up huge chunks of the federal budget and have always been juicy targets of the deficit hawks. It’s possible that language creating such a commission could be added to the debt limit legislation up for a Senate vote on Jan. 20, or it could be added to the President’s next budget request in early February.