Please see update at bottom.



The new deficit reduction plan from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles calls for $5 trillion in savings this decade -- $6 trillion including interest -- roughly the same as their outline in December 2010. So it's basically the same plan, right?



Wrong. Look at where the cuts come from this time. Whereas the first plan was a roughly even mix of higher taxes and lower spending, the new plan calls for 44 percent* less revenue. When you count the interest payments saved by running smaller deficits, both plans would cut around $4 trillion within a decade.



The swing toward spending cuts is pretty shocking to me, and I have emailed some budget analysts to make sure I'm fairly comparing the plans.



Why might Bowles and Simpson have proposed such a radically different mix of new taxes and spending cuts? Two reasons.



First, there aren't enough people in Washington who want to raise taxes on anybody making less than $250,000 to make the original $2.6 billion figure work. Second, Congress has demonstrated a fairly strong appetite for scheduling budget cuts. This plan -- which builds on the spending cuts under the Budget Control Act and the new higher tax rates on income over $450,000 -- shifts the weight of deficit reduction toward spending cuts. As a result, it's even more cut-happy than John Boehner's plan from December (broken down by Matthew O'Brien).

