"Super" Committee Turns Out To Be Poorly Named; Will Announce Failure Today

This means the $1.2 trillion in automatic sequestration goes forward.

A weekend of talks among members of the congressional committee charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in budget cuts appeared to produce no last-minute compromise ahead of Monday's practical deadline. Democratic and Republican aides told CNN on Sunday that discussions had turned to how to announce the failure to reach a deal.

A senior Democratic aide said talks are focused on a Monday announcement.
Another senior Democratic source said, "No decisions or agreement has been reached concerning any announcement or how this will end. But, yes, the likely outcome is no agreement will be reached."

The cut to defense is severe and cuts into muscle. The one thing Obama likes cutting is the military, and he already cut $450 billion from its (ten year) budget. With the additional $600 billion from the automatic sequestration, that brings the cuts to a trillion, imposed just over the past couple of years (though the full cuts are measured over ten years).

Because the cuts are so severe, I could see Republicans seeking to undo them -- and I can see Democrats demanding the Medicare cuts be undone as well, in exchange. Resulting in no cuts, which is, of course, what they wanted.

In fact, I think this was their plan all along. Engineer a crisis, make unreachable demands on Republicans as the cost of avoiding the crisis, and then run on that in 2012.

Actually that probably should have been foreseeable.

I don't know. There is going to be a lot of anger over this, but I really do not know if it's really possible to do the seriously revolutionary budget-cutting we need with one-half of one half of the elected political branches of government.

Those of you who predicted "designed collapse of the conservative negotiating position in stages," your bet is looking better.

More: Perspectives about this as Hot Air's quotes of the day.

It's possible, or likely, the US will see another credit rating cut. That sounds about right to me. In the current state of gridlock, the Democrats protect spending that no electorate ever voted in favor of financing, while Republicans protect a taxation level the public actually prefers.

The problem is, the public keeps electing Democratic spending with Republican tax-cutters.

The public needs to understand its let's-not-decide attitude is killing this country.

We are financing about two-thirds of what we're spending, and that is going up. Something has to give.

posted by Ace at 07:23 AM

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