Deficit panel leaders' plan curbs Social Security

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leaders of President Barack Obama's bipartisan deficit commission launched a daring assault on mushrooming federal deficits today, proposing reducing annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security, gradually raising the retirement age to 69 and taking aim at popular tax breaks such as the mortgage-interest deduction.

As part of a proposal to wrestle $1-trillion-plus deficits under control, their plan also would curb the growth of Medicare. It came a week after voters put Republicans back in charge of the House and told Washington that the government is too big.

The plan by Chairman Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, the co-chairman, however, doesn't look like it can win the support from 14 commission members that is needed to force a debate in Congress.

Bowles is a Democrat and was former President Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff. Simpson is a Wyoming Republican.

The two were among the first to acknowledge their plan's unpopularity — and to suggest it would be a nonstarter in Congress.