Supercommittee likely to admit defeat on debt deal

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Post:

The congressional committee tasked with reducing the federal deficit is poised to admit defeat as soon as Monday, and its unfinished business will set up a year-end battle over emergency jobless benefits and an expiring payroll tax holiday.

Those provisions are among a host of measures set to lapse at the end of December. During nearly three months of negotiations, the “supercommittee” had been weighing whether to extend at least some of them as part of a broader plan to shave a minimum of $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

Democrats and many economists consider particularly urgent the need to extend jobless benefits and the one-year payroll tax cut. With national unemployment stuck at 9 percent, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed at record levels, the government is providing up to 99 weeks of support to about 3.5 million people.

Meanwhile, the payroll tax cut, enacted last December, allows most American workers to keep an additional 2 percent of their earnings, a boon to tight household budgets as well as the economic recovery. Economists at J.P. Morgan Chase recently estimated that if Congress does not extend the two measures, economic growth next year could take a hit of as much as two percentage points — enough to revive fears of a recession.

Time is also running out for doctors who see Medicare patients. These physicians are scheduled to absorb a 30 percent cut in government reimbursements in January. A long list of tax breaks, including an inflation adjustment that protects more than 30 million families from paying the alternative minimum tax, also will be eliminated unless Congress acts.

Although many of the expiring provisions have received bipartisan support in the past, this year they face a welter of political obstacles, none more important than cost. Extending them all through 2012 threatens to add nearly $300 billion to annual budget deficits — and therefore to future borrowing — darkening the nation’s fiscal outlook at the very moment lawmakers had hoped to reassure financial markets with fresh savings.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said he was uneasy about extending the payroll tax holiday, calling the national debt “a greater threat to us” than the weak economy.

“If the supercommittee fails, I think there will be a stark realization by every member of the U.S. Senate that we’re at the end of the year and these complex challenges have not been dealt with,” Sessions said. “It’s likely to be a really difficult period."
________

The Supercommittee's Kabuki theater looks like it's about to close down.

[Saltbag]

What a shocker... it's gonna fail. This unconstitutional farce was meant to fail. Can you just see John Adams saying "Ooo, this is a toughy. What we need to do... is appoint a super committee, brighter than us mere state representatives, to figure this out!"

 

So let it fail. Take the forced budget cuts, even in Defense. We can always rectify that later. Better than some contrived Super-Duper Committee hand-puppet of a plan that raises taxes and grants the unions a trillion dollars, paying it back over a trillion years, and doesn't cut anything. We'll just have to listen to the Zero weep and trumpet up about how he can't get anything done now that he lost his congress as an excuse for how ineffectual he is.

 

We know the routine.

 

The zero will express his disappointment with the super-duper committee, pining for the good old days when the congress was bought and paid for. He'll once again present it that those around him have failed. Not of his own failure of leadership, but because nobody will stand with him... sniff. He doesn't have autocracy, but he should! That's the problem. Blah, blah, blah. We know the drill.

 

This isn't very fun anymore.

[clearvision]

I'm fine with the default versus more taxes in a "grand compromise". The cuts are only 100Billion a year. Chump change. I don't think they hit until 2013.

[Chickadee]

I'm fine with the default versus more taxes in a "grand compromise". The cuts are only 100 billion a year. Chump change. I don't think they hit until 2013.

Yep, and there is plenty of time between now and 2013 for the legislature to completely cancel those cuts anyway.

 

I agree this committee was doomed from the start. What incentive was there for them to accomplish anything? NONE.

 

I have concern for the state of this nation for the next 3-5 years.

[Valin]

What a shocker... it's gonna fail. This unconstitutional farce was meant to fail. Can you just see John Adams saying "Ooo, this is a toughy. What we need to do... is appoint a super committee, brighter than us mere state representatives, to figure this out!"

 

 

[nickydog]

Yes, Newt!

[Evad]

What a shocker... it's gonna fail. This unconstitutional farce was meant to fail. Can you just see John Adams saying "Ooo, this is a toughy. What we need to do... is appoint a super committee, brighter than us mere state representatives, to figure this out!"

 

So let it fail. Take the forced budget cuts, even in Defense. We can always rectify that later. Better than some contrived Super-Duper Committee hand-puppet of a plan that raises taxes and grants the unions a trillion dollars, paying it back over a trillion years, and doesn't cut anything. We'll just have to listen to the Zero weep and trumpet up about how he can't get anything done now that he lost his congress as an excuse for how ineffectual he is.

 

We know the routine.

 

The zero will express his disappointment with the super-duper committee, pining for the good old days when the congress was bought and paid for. He'll once again present it that those around him have failed. Not of his own failure of leadership, but because nobody will stand with him... sniff. He doesn't have autocracy, but he should! That's the problem. Blah, blah, blah. We know the drill.

 

This isn't very fun anymore.

 

We certainly do know the routine and it was doomed from the get-go, DOA.

 

Congress is a disgrace, rift with incompetence and malfeasance.

It has transmogrified to the lowest form of governance and needs to be completely expunged.

 

VOTE THEM ALL OUT! That's my answer.

[Valin]

Podcast: Three Martini Lunch 11/21/11

 

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud super committee Republicans for resisting the incessant Democratic demand for major tax increases. They also rip Democrats for saying Republicans are the partisans in this debate.

(Snip)

[SrWoodchuck]

IMO-Congress has no constitutional right to abrogate the authority given them, regardless of the problems. I agree with all here that it should fail miserably.

 

H/T:StiltonJarlsberg@TheoSpark

[Valin]

IMO-Congress has no constitutional right to abrogate the authority given them, regardless of the problems. I agree with all here that it should fail miserably.

 

H/T:StiltonJarlsberg@TheoSpark

 

 

One of the things that always surprises me (even though it should not by this time) is two different views of the same thing.

 

America Dodges a Super-Tax-Hike as Super-Committee Collapses

LAWRENCE KUDLOW

11/21/11

 

And

 

Congress' supercommittee collapses in failure, stock markets plunge

David Lightman and William Douglas

[clearvision]

IF the stock markets plunged because of this event only, then there are a bunch of stupid investors to think that this was going anywhere.

[SrWoodchuck]

IF the stock markets plunged because of this event only, then there are a bunch of stupid investors to think that this was going anywhere.

Maybe they're afraid of the next downgrade that will be coming, onless pResident Ohno can twist some arms, or bribe someone with more crony socialism.