Super Committee Fails to Reach Deficit Agreement

[WestVirginiaRebel]

National Journal:

The bipartisan congressional committee tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction announced on Monday it cannot reach agreement by the Wednesday deadline, a stark if not unexpected admission that its efforts have ended in failure.

"After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline," the co-chairs, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said.

The declaration came late Monday afternoon in a written statement from the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction despite last-second discussions in closed-door meetings.

The committee, in the end, could not resolve that Republicans would not go as far as Democrats wanted on allowing more revenue raisers, and Democrats did not want to move on entitlement reforms. Intense messaging by both political parties on which was more to blame is surely to spill out for days, if not months.

The super panel was created with extraordinary, fast-track powers this summer under the law agreed to by Republicans and Democrats during the debt ceiling crisis. That same law now says its failure will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years, starting in 2013. That so-called sequestration is to include cuts to Pentagon spending.
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Via Hot Air, why this may not help the Republicans:

The silver lining here, supposedly, is that the GOP’s going to take back the Senate and the White House next year and then write its own deal on deficit reduction. In that case, explain to me how a Republican dream package gets past a Senate filibuster. We’ll pick up a few seats in November but we won’t have 60, and the remaining Democrats in the chamber will face enormous pressure from their base to block any form of tax reform that extends the Bush tax cuts for the rich. And they’ll have support for that too: In today’s new CNN poll, 67 percent said they wanted the Super Committee to increase taxes on businesses and higher-income Americans. A redder Congress means the GOP will have a stronger hand in negotiations, but there’s still going to be a showdown — and maybe gridlock — over taxes. Would the Dems really filibuster a GOP attempt to make the cuts permanent across the board, knowing that that would mean a tax hike on the middle class starting in 2013? Will they agree to real entitlement reform in exchange for raising the rates on the rich, in the unlikely event that some meaningful number of Republicans would agree to that?

The Democrats wanted this to happen...

[RandyM]

Wow! Isn't THIS a total surprise?

[Valin]

Wow! Isn't THIS a total surprise?

 

The idea that some people would be surprised at this is deeply deeply depressing.

 

 

 

 

Contentions: Answer to DC Stalemate is Democracy

Jonathan S. Tobin

11.21.2011

 

The collapse of the congressional supercommittee’s efforts to craft a budget compromise satisfactory to both Republicans and Democrats will, like the standoff last summer on the debt ceiling, be presented as evidence that the system has failed. The finger pointing has already begun, with Democrats blaming Republicans for not being willing to raise taxes and Republicans blaming Democrats for not being willing to cut entitlements. The fiasco will require last-minute efforts to avoid damaging mandatory defense cuts. All this will heighten public disgust with Congress. But the opprobrium that will rain down on Washington will be misplaced.

 

The problem isn’t the fault of senators and representatives who “won’t compromise,” but the fact that control of the current Congress is split between a House that was won by the GOP in 2010 and a Senate that is still controlled by Democrats who were swept in with their victories in 2006 and 2008. Expecting either party to betray their bases in the name of a vacuous compromise that would please no one was always unrealistic. The only way to end the standoff is a new election that will present the voters with a clear choice between the competing visions of the two parties. Fortunately, there is one scheduled less than a year from now that can easily settle the question.

 

(Snip)

 

Next November, the voters can choose between the party that wants to raise taxes and keep entitlements intact and the party that doesn’t want to do either of those things. It is an open question as to whether the Democrats’ Mediscare tactics or the Republicans’ Tea Party aversion to raising taxes will prevail. But that choice ought to be made by the people, not by politicians who jilt the voters who elected them in the first place.

 

 

 

 

And again Newt last Aug.