Back in the summer, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9) told Think Progress that President Obama's 18-member deficit commission, of which she is a member, was destined to fail because conservatives refuse to consider any tax hikes. That seems likely. The proposal put forth by the commission’s co-chairs last week, when it's not making the tax code more regressive, relies heavily on spending cuts. And Republicans on the panel have definitively ruled out any tax increase in recent weeks.

The Illinois Democrat wants to see Congress take a different path. Yesterday, she unveiled a debt reduction plan she says "achieves our goal" by 2015 while protecting "the poor and the middle-class." Among the changes she's advocating are $110.7 billion in cuts from the defense budget and $7.5 billion in cuts to farm subsidies; tying up corporate tax loopholes; and implementing a public option for health care reform, a progressive estate tax, and a cap-and-trade system. (She discussed her ideas with Ezra Klein here.)

The package should probably have placed some additional focus on the long-term impact of health care inflation, which the federal health care law begins to address and the co-chairs' report all but ignores, but it's definitely serious and should be treated that way on the Hill.