RIP Debt Super Committee (8/1/11-11/21/11)

Good riddance.

"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 two chairmen of the panel, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), said in a joint statement.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the supercommittee member who authored the GOP's deficit-reduction proposal rejected by Democrats on the special panel, said the groupl had "an extraordinary opportunity" to create "millions of jobs through a reformed tax system and put our government on a path to fiscal sanity by cutting spending."

"Unfortunately," he said, "this opportunity has been wasted."

Meh, it was never an opportunity. Obama and Senate Democrats are working off a mandate from the 2008 elections, the House GOP from the 2010 midterms. The American people sent a mixed message (one of the most liberal presidents ever and a tea party inspired House), that you'd get this result was foreseeable and predictable.

Only the American people can sort this out and they will next year.

Now the race is on to pin the blame for the failure of this process and attempts to disarm the automatic cut triggers. Those triggers by the way don't kick in until 2013, so there's plenty of time to deal with that.

The big lesson to take away from this...don't ever trust these kinds of committee. Don't let them pawn things off on others and out of sight where we can beat on them.

Remember when the debt ceiling deal was cut and this committee was born? John Boehner sold the deal saying the deal, "Requires baseline to be current law, effectively making it impossible for Joint Committee to increase taxes." Yeah, the GOP offered hundreds of billions in additional taxes.

At the time, an idiotic blogger pointed out that there was no way Boehner could promise that and taxes were likely very much going to be on the table.

Idiot blogger 1- Speaker of the House 0.

posted by DrewM. at 06:25 PM

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