Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has a good take on it. 

Nevertheless, both the Washington Post, which is taking up the deadline hysteria, and the more jaundiced Times are neglecting the most heinous aspect of the latest proposed remedy, which is to circumvent Constitutionally-prescribed legislative procedures. There’s no mention in the Times, and from what I can tell, only this oblique reference in the Post:

Then Congress would go to work to produce as much as $3 trillion in additional savings through an overhaul of the tax code and major changes to Social Security and Medicare, the biggest drivers of federal spending. To identify those savings, Congress would create a new bipartisan debt-reduction committee comprising 12 lawmakers from both the House and Senate, an idea offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

This innocuous description is incomplete and misleading. Ryan Grim explains what it really means in the Huffington Post (hat tip Guy S):

........snip......

The Tea Partiers make a fetish of invoking the Constitution when it suits them but will happily run roughshod over it when it conflicts with their pet wishes. Not that they are singularly guilty in this conspiracy against the public-at-large, but their faux holier-than-thou/populist pretense while aligning themselves with an elite power grab is particularly nausea-inducing.

I hate using the word “fascism” because overuse has weakened its bite, but trumped-up threat by trumped up threat, our government is moving relentlessly in that direction.

In other words it's an attempt to sidestep the tea party right and the progressive left. Both thorns in the side to the rank and file.