With the collapse of the deficit-cutting supercommittee, Congress’ emergency backup budget-cutting plan now is supposed to take over — automatic, across-the-board spending reductions of roughly $1 trillion from military and well as domestic government programs.
But the big federal deficit reductions that are to be triggered by Monday’s supercommittee collapse wouldn’t kick in until January 2013. And that allows plenty of time for lawmakers to try to rework the cuts or hope that a new post-election cast of characters — possibly a different president — will reverse them.
Congress’ defense hawks will be leading the charge, arguing that the debt accord reached by President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans last summer already inflicted enough damage on the military budget. That agreement set in motion some $450 billion in cuts to future Pentagon accounts over the next decade.
The supercommittee’s failure to produce a deficit-cutting plan of at least $1.2 trillion after two months of work is supposed to activate the further, automatic cuts, half from domestic programs, half from defense. Combined with the current reductions, the Pentagon would be looking at nearly $1 trillion in cuts to projected spending over 10 years.
Reactions from GOP hopefuls:
Romney: “He’s done nothing. It is another example of failed leadership. He has not taken personal responsibility to get the super committee to find ways to balance the budget and cut spending.”
Gingrich: “Collapse of the Super Committee…[is] good for America.”
Perry: “The whole reason a super committee was created was because the President wasn’t willing to lead, wasn’t willing to even put on paper his plans for cutting spending.”
The WSJ has good Washington Wire coverage with implications here.
Previous LI coverage of the Super Committee here.
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Comments
The supercommittee was doomed to failure from the start, because if you take away the Democrats ability to spend money, the inability to encourage their constituents to vote for them because of the promises made of bread and circuses dancing through their heads, what do the Democrats have left to offer? Handing Taiwan over to China? South Korea and Japan for good measure, too. Unlimited public sodomy and fornication? Pedophile rights? Replacing the American Flag with that of Mexico’s? Handing California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas back to Mexico. Will they also offer Louisianna, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida to the Mexicans as a gesture of goodwill. Seize the finances of the Catholic Church? Banning all prayer, public and private? The Democratic Party, without the ability to spend, is simply out of business.
“We have to tax more in order to spend more” Charley Rangel (D-NY)
How can an illegal Supercommittee balance a budget which is non-existent?
The failure is in failing to admit that President Obama has no budget, never had a budget and will never have a budget.
Um, what was illegal about the “super-committee”?
Though I am not a Harvard Constitutional Scholar credentialed to make-up stuff I do understand that it is mandatory that two-thirds of the House must be inclusive to all legislature, amendments, and votes; this Super Committee only has power to make proposals. Will any of the Supercommitte proposals be voted on?
What is the point of States having representation when only a few States are represented, as this Super Committee represents?
At this point the Super Committe is just the backroom-dealing corrupt club coming of their dark room to deal dirty in the open.
it is mandatory that two-thirds of the House must be inclusive to all legislature, amendments, and votes;
What language is that in? It looks almost like English, all of the words are in English dictionaries, but the sentence doesn’t mean anything, so you must be writing in some related language. Perhaps Friesian? Seriously, I can’t respond to this because I have no idea what it says.
this Super Committee only has power to make proposals.
That’s right.
Will any of the Supercommitte proposals be voted on?
Since it’s not going to make any proposals (hence its “failure”), obviously not.
What is the point of States having representation when only a few States are represented, as this Super Committee represents?
Huh?! Again, this looks almost but not quite like English.
At this point the Super Committe is just the backroom-dealing corrupt club coming of their dark room to deal dirty in the open.
And again, huh? It’s a committee, like all legislative committees, which are of course perfectly legal and the way all legislatures do their business. But it’s a committee of both houses, hence the informal “super-” prefix.
You still haven’t pointed to anything even remotely illegal about it.
I’ll trump your Super Committee Roundup with a Congressional Committee Super Roundup. Here goes:
In the House there are 21 committees with 108 subcommittees.
In the Senate there are 20 committees with 68 subcommittees.
There are 5 joint committees with 4 subcommittees.
That’s a total of 46 committees with 180 subcommittees.
Ask yourself: Did you think these people would do anything? Ever? Really?
The circus is in town.
That’s just silly. What is it about that number of committees that makes it more likely that Congress will do nothing rather than that it will do something? What number of committees do you think would work better, and why? You are aware, are you not, that almost all the useful work that Congress (or any other legislature) does happens in committees, not on the floor?
Your assumption is that the committees are productive. Congress has done no productive work for over a generation, in or out of committee. The floor is empty most of the time. Dingy Harry gets his legislation passed after dark on Saturday evenings. The President issues an administrative order to accomplish what he wants when they can’t get legislation through. Committees are a taxpayer financed employment gigs for congresssmen, their staffs, lobbyists, beltway lawyers, and the media. They all love them.
It may or may not be true that “Congress has done no productive work for over a generation” (actually it’s obviously untrue, but let’s leave that for a moment), but what has this got to do with the number of committees? Whether Congress has actually done anything useful or not, the committee is an integral part of how it operates; any useful work that you might want it to do will have to be done in committee. Criticising Congress for having a large number of committees is like criticising it for having a large number of desks or stairs or security guards; unless you have some way of determining what the optimum number is, you can’t say whether the current number is too big, too small, or just right.
The floor is empty most of the time.
As it is in most legislatures, productive or unproductive. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
The President issues an administrative order to accomplish what he wants when they can’t get legislation through.
The President can’t legislate. Executive orders are not binding on anyone who doesn’t work for him. They’re just orders from a boss to his employees, of exactly the kind that are issued in any workplace. He can’t order his employees to break the law, any more than any other employer can.
Committees are a taxpayer financed employment gigs for congresssmen, their staffs, lobbyists, beltway lawyers, and the media. They all love them.
No, committees are how legislatures operate. A productive legislature is the result of productive committees; a useless legislature is the result of useless committees. Many, most, or even all the committees of the current Congress may be useless; that’s a matter of opinion. But that has nothing to do with your criticism, which was not of their uselessness but of their number, as if it were obvious that there ought to be fewer of them. You may as well complain that Congress has too many members, and there ought to be only 350, or 300, or whatever number you like. Actually I think there are too few Congressmen, and the House would be improved by being expanded to several thousand.
Congressman West Statement on the Failure of the Super Committee
(WASHINGTON)– Congressman Allen West (R-FL) released this statement this morning on the looming failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, referred to as the Super Committee:
We all knew that the Democrats in the Senate (and House) intended to make cuts in defense before this summer’s debt morass. So now there are cuts in place .. some that Democrats want and some that Republicans wanted and a President who says he will veto and changes. We also know that this isn’t enough.
I say mark your calendar. The first cuts are on the way. Both sides have embraced them, backed up by a Presidential veto.
You do the math …
projected deficit for FY 2012 of $1.65 trillion.
a) “debt deal” cuts of $1 trillion over ten years (roughly $100 billion per year)
b) let the
BushObama tax cuts sunset adds $4 trillion over 10 years (roughly $400 billion per year)c) additional $500 billion or so for one year if we steal everything from the “top 1%”
(a) + (b) leaves a projected deficit of $1.15 trillion for FY 2013, if nothing changes (and no inflation or growth adjustments)
(a) + (b) + (c) leaves a projected deficit of $0.65 trillion for FY 2013, if nothing changes (and no inflation or growth adjustments) but it goes back up in FY 2014 and all sports will be offshore.
[…] Legal Insurrection for a Super Committee Roundup. […]
It will be the epitome of irony if cowardly Congressional GOP reaction to this so-called “failure” forces a reemergence of the push for a third party. Someone needs to be the grown-up here. Has no politician anywhere discovered the principle of “tough love”? Sorry. I guess not.
Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock is a US Senate Candidate in the 2012 Republican Primary.
=== ===
[edited] The Super Committee is debating a $1.2 trillion reduction in spending over 10 years. This is less than the deficit in just the next fiscal year. The reduction is less than 3% of $40 trillion in planned spending over the next ten years. Cutting $1.2 trillion would still allow our national debt to increase by as much as $8 trillion.”
“The national debt is the issue, not the simple reduction of $1.2 trillion. Admiral Michael Mullen is former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Our debt is the greatest threat to our national security.” He is correct.
=== ===
Is there anyone with two sentient brain cells who thought this horse hockey would succeed?
If so, please report to the stupid room.
It was never intended to “succeed”. Its purpose was to delay the debt ceiling fight until after the next election.
Considering the debt total is now $15,033,607,255,920.32 (excluding the additional unfunded liabilites somewhere around $52 trillion perhaps up to $100 trillion due over the next fifteen years as 70 million baby boomers set to retire) there is no doubt the debt-ceiling is already busted. http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_31266.php
Super Committee or not, at the end of the day there is not enough captial in the world to pay for this insane governmental stupidity.
You think waiting for the next election will somehow prevent default?
Um, no, the debt ceiling is clearly not busted. The USA has not borrowed more than Congress authorised. If it had, those extra bonds would be worthless and nobody would buy them, because they could not be enforced, and we would all have heard of it. And of course we wouldn’t have had the whole fight this year, if the treasury were simply issuing notes without Congress’s permission. It would just have gone on doing so, with no fuss. So clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Will the “super-committee” prevent an eventual default? Clearly not, especially since it didn’t do anything. But the truth is that it wasn’t intended to do anything. The whole point of establishing it was to kick the debt ceiling issue down the road, so that it wouldn’t have to be dealt with until after the election. There was never the slightest intention of actually doing anything this year or next.
of course, the msm (or whatever you want to call it) is totally relying on the statements from obama, pelosi, and reid that the failure of the committee is all the fault of intransigent republicans. not a peep about the president’s lack of involvement or leadership.
…nor, perhaps even more importantly, the democrats insistence on huge tax increases…folks might not be too happy to hear about that, would they ?
So the failure of the Supercommittee will not cut anything until 2013. There has not been a budget for 2 years. Legislation cannot bind another congress (You cannot write a 2012 budget that keeps the 2013 congress from doing whatever they vote for). Am I the only one who sees this “supercommittee” as empty as 10 year “budget” projections?
Nothing stops a President Romney, Cain, Gingrich, (etc) from signing their own 2013 budget and setting whatever funding levels they ask congress to pass. All this is meant to do is to provide political ads that say GOP cut medicare and defense.
If you want to raise revenue, tax all politicians on their campaign warchests. Heck, only tax them the 15% cap gains tax. Let the 1 billion dollars that the President wants to raise for the campaign actually do some good. One could buy a lot good with 150 million dollars… Just saying!
I am disgusted with the failure of the super committee. But my animus for the committee’s failure is over-shadowed by my disappointment in Obama who immediately turned it into an opportunity to blame republicans.
In the absence of his own plan to right the ship, he defers to a bunch of people who belong to an organization with a 13% approval rating?!?! I thought he was supposed to be the smartest man in the room. It’s obvious he did not want to be blamed for the inevitable failure from the word go and was going to use this as topic for his continual campaign. Why didn’t he use some of his intelligence, charisma, and political capital (whatever’s left) to put a plan in place and sell it to the American people?
A leader takes charge and tells the country what we are going to do. Instead, he goes around the world telling people how soft and lazy Americans have become. He laments the fact that we have no Sputnik moment to set a goal and unite the country. THIS IS YOUR SPUTNIK MOMENT?!?!
Now, as he blames the GOP and sets himself up as the “reasonable man”, he’s going to use defense spending as leverage. He’s playing political games with our national security! Incidentally, providing for the common defense is explicitly enumerated in the constitution; it can be done only by the federal government. Why can’t he threaten to shut down the EPA, NEA, or any myriad useless/divisive federal organization? Nope, the wise political move is to use the bully pulpit, blame your opponents for inaction, and mislead the country into thinking that the only thing that can be done now is cut our defense. That cutting defense spending happens to be a goal since he was young is a bonus.
I am equally upset with the GOP candidates. Why aren’t they attacking the president on this?!?! Why isn’t someone, anyone, standing up and pointing out the obvious. That Obama is playing politics at a time when we need a leader. That he’s not a leader. He’s a small man with even smaller ideas.