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The Spectacle Blog
Here are two reports to keep in mind as the prospects for supercommittee “success” dim.
One is from the Washington Post:
If the congressional “supercommittee” cannot agree on a plan to tame the federal debt by next week’s deadline, as now appears likely, here’s what will happen: nothing.
The automatic spending cuts that were supposed to force the panel to deliver more palatable options would not take effect until January 2013. That leaves lawmakers a full year to devise alternatives.
The other is from conservative wonk extraordinaire Jim Capretta, a piece titled “For the Supercommittee, Failure Might Be the Best Option”:
In truth, what is really holding back the super committee is that it does not have a mandate from voters to do what needs to be done. That’s going to take another election, in 2012. Only then will it be clear which vision of government - permanently higher taxes to pay for the entitlement status quo, or lower taxes with sensible entitlement reform - has the upper hand. At that point, both sides will be able to calibrate their positions to reflect political reality.
Until then, asking the super committee to fix the problem is simply unrealistic. And there’s really no reason to wring hands over it.
After the election, when the voters have had their say, Congress will still have plenty of time to implement changes that would forestall the need for a 2013 sequester, and to provide room for the president (whoever that might be) to work with the next Congress on a broad budget deal. That will be the moment to address the fundamental questions that must be answered to narrow the long-term gap between revenue and spending. Not now.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/18/two-on-the-supercommittee
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 11.18.11 @ 1:40PM
And if the Super Committee fails what we will need then is a Super Duper Committee. The members will be required to wear capes in public so the public can pepper them with ideas on how to cut costs.
Once the Super Duper Committee is in progress we will all be saved. The capes should be red or blue depending on party affiliation.
conservative bob| 11.18.11 @ 3:57PM
NO deal at all is much better than a bad deal or a sham... all of this is really just theater anyway... We are increasing our debt by 1.6 t annually and they with smoke and mirros claim to cut .5t over 10 years.
Our government is out of control, we need to bring it to heal in the next election and the one after that and the one after that and so on.
Limited constitutional government.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 11.18.11 @ 4:40PM
The only problem with those claims is that they're not true. If the sequester is triggered, it will kick in on the first day of FY2013 - i.e. 10/1/2012, almost 4 days before the next President is inaugurated and over 3 months before the next President is seated. So these deep defense cuts will happen LONG before the next President and the next Congress will be able to do ANYTHING about them. And even if it will be a GOP President and a GOP-controlled Congress, does ANYONE really believe they will do anything to rebuild America's defense? I don't.
aware| 11.18.11 @ 7:18PM
"....That's going to take another election, in 2012."
Brilliant! Why haven't we thought of that before? An election! If only we had had a few of those we wouldn't be in the mess we're in!