Remember that Fiscal Commission (officially the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) President Obama created back in February, which he tasked with balancing the budget by 2015? Turns out solving the nation’s fiscal crisis isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Yesterday, the Commission’s two co-chairs released a proposal of sorts, a draft of a plan that would bring down the deficit to 2 percent of GDP by 2014, and lower the national debt to 34 percent of GDP by 2040. The co-chairs trumpeted those figures, but the plan was greeted by almost universal ire, since it attacks sacred cows on both the left and the right. Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist threatened that Republicans who supported the proposal would be breaking their “no tax” pledge. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, said the plan “tells working Americans to ‘Drop Dead.’”

In this week's Watcher, we ponder the fate of fiscal policy in the lame duck session of Congress set to commence on Nov. 15. Our article and indeed most of the punditry, analysis, news, and campaign rhetoric has all but completely ignored the fate of some $80 billion in tax breaks for the middle class.

After securing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the top two House Republicans -- Speaker of the House-to-be John Boehner (R-OH) and Marjority Leader-to-be Eric Cantor (R-VA) -- offered their governing philosophy: Listen to the American people.

"What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" That's the lede on a recent New York Times article, one talking about a tax cut called Making Work Pay (MWP). President Obama's staff was instrumental in crafting and passing the MWP, which was part of the Recovery Act. The tax cut is stealthy, in that its design spreads the benefits out in small amounts, in each paycheck, as opposed to a single, larger payout at tax time. It was so stealthy that, as the Times article notes, few people know that Obama signed into law a tax cut affecting 95 percent of taxpayers. In fact, the MWP was so stealthy the Times barely mentioned it until this week. So why is the Times surprised no one knows about the tax cut?