Reid debt ceiling plan would save more than Boehner's

Proving yet again that the GOP has no idea how to manage money-- The Huffington Post reports:

The Senate Democratic plan to raise the debt ceiling would slash spending cuts far deeper than House Speaker John Boehner's proposal, according to a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) by the official congressional scorekeeper on this morning.

Reid's plan would reduce the deficit by $2.2 trillion over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said. Boehner's would trim just $850 billion, the CBO said last night. The speaker was forced to pull his bill from the floor ahead of a planned today vote in the wake of the unimpressive score. The score CBO gave Reid's bill makes passing Boehner's bill -- which every major Tea Party group has deemed insufficient -- more challenging for the Republican leader. Reid's plan includes no tax hikes or additional revenue, a demand Republicans have stuck to.

The scoring is anything but exact, however. Republicans often argue that tax cuts should be scored "dynamically" -- that the government should assume that greater tax revenue will flow into the coffers as a result of the economic stimulus provided by the tax reductions. The CBO does not embrace dynamic scoring, and so does not calculate the depressing effect that cutting spending could have on the economy and therefore on tax revenues. If the spending cuts tank the economy, in other words, the attempt at deficit reduction could have a drastically different result, and even increase the debt.

Two major differences account for the diverging scores given to Reid and Boehner's plans. First, Democrats get credit for more than a trillion in savings by winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's GOP budget assumed the same savings, but Boehner's does not.

Second, Boehner was only attempting to find a trillion and change in cuts so that the debt ceiling would be raised by an equal amount, thus forcing a brand new debt-ceiling showdown at the height of the election. Reid's plan would raise the debt ceiling until 2013.

Both Reid and Boehner's plans would create a super committee -- or Super Congress -- made up of legislators from both parties and both chambers that would have the power to write laws and send them directly to Congress for a fast-track, up-or-down vote that could not be amended.