As you may recall from one of Barack Obama???s early half-hearted efforts to pretend he cares about the federal deficit, Erskine Bowles was hand-picked by the President to be the Democrat co-chair of the ???Commission on Fiscal Responsibility,??? generally known as the ???deficit commission.??? The Republican co-chairman was Alan Simpson.
The commission issued a set of recommendations with great fanfare, which President Obama utterly and completely ignored. Simply convening this blue-ribbon committee was sufficient to show he ???cared??? about fiscal responsibility, you see. Why, it even had the words ???fiscal responsibility??? right in its name!
Bowles, who hails from North Carolina, served as White House Chief of Staff during Bill Clinton???s second term. He ran for the Senate on the Democratic ticket, although he didn???t win, and was thought to be a strong contender for Governor of North Carolina in the upcoming race, though he chose not to run. He???s got pretty solid Democrat credentials.
And he loves Rep. Paul Ryan, currently targeted for demonization in the most outlandish terms by the Obama campaign. In a video from last year that has been going viral across the Internet over the past few days, Bowles describes Ryan as ???honest, straightforward, and sincere,??? and offers similar praise for Ryan???s budget proposal.
Bowles is considerably less enthusiastic about President Obama???s budget plans, saying of the first Obama proposal, ???I don???t think anybody took that budget very seriously.???
