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We won't know until Friday whether the final proposal from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles can attract the votes of 14 of the commission's 18 members. Right now, the outlook is doubtful. But we do have the final proposal, so we know the policy options they're offering. Here are the four best and five worst parts of the plan:

The good:

A payroll tax holiday in 2011: Simpson and Bowles embrace the Bipartisan Policy Commission's proposal for a payroll-tax holiday in 2011. Actually, "embrace" might be a strong word. They say Congress should "consider" it. Still, a nod toward the need for policies speeding recovery is better than ignoring that need altogether.

Process, process, process: The Simpson-Bowles recommendations correctly identify congressional inertia as the central impediment to deficit reduction. And so they try to address it. To enforce discretionary spending cuts, they make spending that busts the caps ineligible for the reconciliation process, demand that Congress take a separate vote, and then instruct OMB to cut appropriations spending across-the-board by the amount that Congress has overspent unless Congress takes another vote to stop them. Inertia, in this case, is on the side of the deficit hawks.

On the health-care side, they strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board by applying it to all health-care providers sooner. They push tax reform through a "failsafe" that automatically increases taxes if Congress doesn't rework the system by 2013. They also include rules forcing different bodies to watch over health-care spending and the full government budget and automatically offer recommendations for reform if costs exceed preset limits. Whether these are the exact right procedural reforms is up for debate -- and probably doubtful. But the commission is right to emphasize the need for procedural reforms.

Defense spending and tax expenditures are major problems: The most positive impact the commission has had on the debate has been to move two formerly sacrosanct categories of spending onto the table. There's a lot of money in the defense budget, and much of it is wasted, but when Washington talks about cutting spending, it usually talks about "non-defense discretionary spending." The commission cuts equally from defense spending and non-defense spending. Tax expenditures like the mortgage-interest deduction also tend to get a pass, but here they come under the knife. It's very difficult to imagine any budget deal that isn't aggressive on both these fronts, so kudos to the commission for adding them.

A two-sided deal on Social Security: I don't particularly like the commission's Social Security recommendations, but I do like their vision of a deal that's more than just cuts and taxes. Their proposal sharply increases Social Security's minimum benefit, making it a better deal for poor retirees, if not for the average retiree. It also increases benefits for very old retirees, who may have outlived their savings. That's a good addition to the eventual debate over the system's solvency and sufficiency.

The bad:

The tax section: In an odd bid for Republican support, the commission caps revenues at 21 percent of GDP. That's higher than they are now, or than they've been historically. But we're also a larger, older country than we've been historically, with more social spending to support. The commission's mandate was to balance the budget, not decide the size of government. This overstepped it.

But at least that made some political sense. Simpson and Bowles's timidity on tax options is odder. They correctly emphasize the need for tax reform, but they limit themselves to the design of the current system -- a system which almost all experts agree is flawed. No mention of a carbon tax or a value-added tax, both of which are preferred by many, if not most, tax-policy experts.

The 2012 start date: Simpson and Bowles start their cuts in 2012, as they assume the economy will have recovered by then. But what if it hasn't? A better approach would've been using an economic indicator as a trigger. For instance, we could've held stimulative measures like unemployment insurance and a payroll-tax cut until the unemployment rate dipped to 6.5 percent and then, when that milestone was hit, moved to austerity. As it is, there's no real guarantee we'll be recovered by 2012, and if we're not, then we shouldn't start cutting.

Raising the retirement age: If we want to cut Social Security benefits, we should cut Social Security benefits. Raising both the early and full retirement ages mainly penalizes those who hate their jobs or can no longer physically fulfill them. That's not the right way to reform Social Security.

Hobbling government: Among the plan's worst ideas is to cut congressional and White House budgets by 15 percent. Given the role of government and the complexity of modern life, members of Congress are probably understaffed even now. Taking staff away from them just means they'll either be more ignorant about the bills they're voting on, less responsive to their constituents or more reliant on lobbyists and outside players. That's a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach: The small short-term savings will probably be dwarfed by the deep long-term costs.

The same goes for the plan's other aggressive cuts to the government. One proposal, for instance, relies on "attrition" -- not to mention a three-year pay freeze -- to sharply cut the federal workforce by 200,000. "Washington needs to learn to do more with less, using fewer resources to accomplish existing goals without risking a decline in essential government services," the report says. But that's magical thinking. Companies and governments typically do less with less, and though having less saves some money on the front-end, too few banking regulators with too low pay, for instance, might end up costing us a lot of money later on. I'm for smart and targeted reforms to the federal workforce, but these aren't them.

Cowardice on health-care reform: The plan's health-care savings largely consist of hoping the cost controls (IPAB, the excise tax, and various demonstration projects) in the new health-care law work and expanding their power and reach. But the commission "does not take a position" on the new law. In the event that more savings are needed, they throw out a grab bag of liberal and conservative policies, ranging from a public option and government purchasing to Medicare privatization, but don't really put their weight behind any of them. Given that health-care costs are the single most significant driver of our long-term budget problem, the commission's decision to hide from the big questions here is quite disappointing, particularly given their self-styled focus on making hard decisions and telling unpopular truths.

The Yankees and Derek Jeter are making a big mistake with the way they are handling the negotiations for a new deal. After Jeter’s agent, Casey Close, referred to the Yankees negotiating position as “baffling”, GM Brian Cashman responded with this gem of a quote:

"We've encouraged him to test the market and see if there's something he would prefer other than this. If he can, fine. That's the way it works."

It wasn’t exactly a “thank you for all you’ve done, Derek” and it made the Yankees look small. But, not to be outdone, word leaked from Jeter’s camp that the shortstop was seeking a six-year/$150 million deal. That was later amended down to somewhere around four or five years for “only” $23 or $24 million. Pretty good money for a guy coming off a year where he hit .270/.340/.370.

The fact is the Yankees need Derek Jeter at shortstop in 2011. There are no in-house candidates, Eduardo Nunez didn’t exactly set the world on fire at AAA this year, and the free agent pool is weak. Throw in the fact that barring injury, Jeter will become the first Yankee to get 3,000 hits in 2011 and his return should be assured.

But the Yankees’ problem is beyond 2011. Maybe Jeter’s 2010 campaign was an aberration and he will return to his prolific hitting ways next year, but what if he doesn’t. What if he is like 99% of the shortstops who came before him and plays progressively worse after age 36?

And Jeter is rightfully looking at all the mega-deals the Yankees have handed out and wondering why he isn’t worthy of one. He has always played hard, played hurt and he has never embarrassed the franchise. For fifteen seasons, Jeter has been a great ballplayer on the field and a great ambassador off of it.

What the two sides need to do is find the middle ground. A series of team and player options, triggered by certain performance levels would make the most sense. That followed by a personal services contract after Jeter’s playing days have ended would also probably ease the turmoil. Whatever approach they take, they would be smart to erect a “cone of silence” and keep everything out of the press from this point forward. Neither side will look very good if the current rhetoric continues.

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