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In a Friday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Palin takes aim at a bipartisan commission's recent recommendations on reducing the deficit, calling its suggestions "a disappointment" and claiming that the plan "implicitly endorses the use of 'death panel'-like rationing." Palin lambastes the panel's consideration of the health care law in its examination, and warns that, "not only does it leave ObamaCare intact," but "its proposals would lead to a public option being introduced by the backdoor."

They need 14 of the 18 members to vote yes tomorrow to send the Bowles/Simpson plan to Congress. Ain’t happening. Guess who provided unlucky no vote number five. ABC News has learned Andrew Stern will vote no on the deficit commission’s plan to reduce the national deficit by nearly $4 trillion. Mr. Stern, the former president of the SEIU, has informed co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson that he will be the fifth member voting no, ending the commission’s hopes of officially passing the plan to Congress. The commission needed votes from 14 of the 18 members in order to...

ABC News has learned Andrew Stern will vote no on the deficit commission’s plan to reduce the national deficit by nearly $4 trillion. Mr. Stern, the former president of the SEIU, has informed co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson that he will be the fifth member voting no, ending the commission’s hopes of officially passing the plan to Congress. The commission needed votes from 14 of the 18 members in order to pass the plan to Congress. Mr. Stern joins Sen. Max Baucus and Reps. Dave Camp, Paul Ryan and Jan Schakowsky in voting against the plan. He is also...

If the only legislative option is to vote on the entire report from the Debt Commission, then the changes in Social Security should serve as a poison pill to prevent any Republican from supporting it. While there are definitely some good proposals in the report that call for spending cuts, anyone who calls themselves a conservative cannot support the commission's report as a package deal.  It is therefore disappointing to hear that Senators Coburn and Crapo plan to vote for the report unconditionally. The Hill is reporting that these Senators believe that if something is not done soon we are...

AOL Opinons editor John Merline notes that the deficit commission titled its proposal “The Moment of Truth,” and perhaps rarely for a government effort, it actually delivers on its advertising. The report exposes six truths about the federal government and its spending addiction. Perhaps even more importantly, it exposes a couple of key myths about the Obama administration and its agenda: 2) Health reform’s cost savings apparently were bogus. Remember how Democrats boasted that health reform would cut the budget deficit by $170 billion over the next decade and far more after that? The deficit commission must not have gotten...

According to various electronic news media sources, the Debt Commission's plan as reported yesterday is a fraud. #1 There is little to no chance of it being enacted in full. #2 If it were, and it were to accomplish what the members say it will, it would reduce the deficit by $4 Trillion over the next 9 years. Last...if it did, given that the deficit is now running in the $1.5 Trillion dollar range, 9 years from now we would have dug a $10 Trillion deeper hole...give or take a few $Billion.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates attacked proposals by the co-chairs of the deficit commission to seek sharp reductions in military spending, arguing the cuts would be “catastrophic” to national security. The co-chairs’ defense cuts, Mr. Gates argued, would only amount to a small dent in the deficit, but devastate the military’s force structure. “The truth of the matter is when it comes to the deficit, the Department of Defense is not the problem,” he said. “I think in terms of the specifics they came up with, that is math not strategy.”

Baby boomers withdrawing funds from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are going to "crush the system" in a matter of years, a member of President Obama's blue-ribbon commission on the debt warned Sunday. David Cote, CEO of Honeywell and one of a handful of private-sector chiefs appointed to the 18-member fiscal reform commission issuing its final recommendations on Dec. 1, said he didn't realize -- even perched at the top of his field -- that the next decade will be disastrous to the nation's accounts ledger unless something drastic is done. "It scares me that as a financially conversant CEO,...

The Committee for Responsible Federal Budget team claimed today that President Obama joined the Spending Challenge with the following comment: My first priority is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that, you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide, and then we decide how do we pay for that. Let me pop the balloon for the CRFB. The only wasteful spending that Obama cut so far were 100 million dollars in pencils and paperclips savings. I am all for cutting goodies for bureaucrats, however this crusade...

President Obama already has the full list of the members of his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – known as the Debt Commission...... • Eskine Bowles (Democratic Co-Chair – appointed by President Obama) – Currently serves on the board of directors of General Motors Corporation, Morgan Stanley (where he began his career), Cousins Properties Inc. and NC Mutual Life Insurance Co. Bowles is President of the University of North Carolina. MBA from Columbia University. Served as White House Chief of Staff for President Clinton . Bowles lost two bids for US Senate. Let’s hope he does not hold...

Everything you need to know about President Obama's commitment to fiscal responsibility and cost containment can be summed up in two words: Andy Stern. Stern is the corruption-coddling head of the powerful Service Employees International Union. In naming Stern and others to the White House debt commission last week, Obama extolled his appointees as "distinguished individuals" who'll bring a "sense of integrity" to the job. Tell that to rank-and-file SEIU members across the country who have watched their hard-earned dues go down the tubes under Stern's thugocracy.

Think Americans are angry at Wash ington today? Just you wait. Even as President Obama yester day formed a panel of Washington graybeards to find ways to control the national debt, the Government Accountability Office was reporting in eye-popping detail on a $5 billion "stimulus" program to weatherize the homes of some 600,000 low-income families. The point, purportedly, was to increase energy efficiency and create "green jobs" -- whatever they may be. But GAO found that, as of Dec. 31 (nearly a year into the program), barely 9,000 homes had, in fact, been weatherized.

Barack Obama does not believe in commissions. At least this is the impression he left during his presidential campaigns: "Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem."..... We thought Obama will bring leadership – we took him for his word. Instead the President keeps pulling commission after commission out of his sleeves.... Stunt after stunt the trickster-in-chief is throwing dust in eyes of the observers in hope they will think he is actually doing something about the crippling US debt. President Obama has...