Dan Mitchell reviews the “Gang of Six” debt ceiling plan.

Mitchell notes good aspects of the plan including: tax cuts across the board, repeal of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), repeal of the CLASS Act, and elimination of the health care exclusion.

But there’s also plenty of bad.

For starters, Mitchell notes, the plan doesn’t place a cap on entitlement spending. The problem there is, entitlement spending is the biggest deficit issue we face. Even President Obama has admitted as much. Mitchell sums it up: “This is like going to the doctor because you have cancer and getting treated for a sprained wrist.”

Another crappy aspect: While there are technically tax cuts across the board, there’s a net tax increase of about $1 trillion. Any economist worth his salt can tell you that raising taxes in the middle of a recession is a bad idea. That’s why Congress extended the 2003 tax cuts last December. Even Democrats understood the necessity of keeping rates lower.

And there’s no Medicare or Medicaid reform. Which is problematic because Medicare and Medicaid are on track to be the single largest contributors to the national deficit. You literally can’t balance the budget unless you address these entitlements. But instead of addressing them, the Group of Six plan punts to a later Congress.

And then there’s the absolute worst part.

Spending actually increases under the plan. Under through corrupt Washington math does spending go down. That math states that the budget increasing slower than before means spending has gone down. It hasn’t. You’ve just slowed the pace at which you’ve increased spending.

Summary

The plan both ignores reality (by failing to reform Medicare and Medicaid) and lies to the American people (by claiming spending cuts when spending will actually increase). Congress must reject the proposal. And the American people should make their opposition to the plan known.