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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Super Committee Failed The Day It Was Created

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 22nd, 2011 at 04:46 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The Super Committee has failed to find a way to trim $1.2 trillion from the deficit. The fact is, though, the Super Committee was a failure from the moment it was conceived. Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, could not control itself. So it punted its failures to a Super Committee and even the threat of massive defense cuts could not prompt Congress to kick its spending addiction.

Now, some members of Congress are even saying “to hell with the defense cuts. We’ll stop those cuts.” Of course.

But it was all a bunch of smoke and mirrors for one simple reason.

We’re going to add ten trillion dollars over the next ten years and all this committee was supposed to do was find $1.2 trillion to trim over the same ten years, i.e. a hundred billion dollars in cuts a year to a trillion dollars in deficits a year.

The math never added up. The Super Committee and the elaborate theater that preceded it were just a bipartisan way to cover up the fact that both Democrats and Republicans have screwed the country out of its life savings while they’ve been funding their pet projects from bridges to nowhere to solar panel firms.

And this all leads to a calamitous dirty little not so secret that the Democrats have no answer for. If Republicans, who were willing to raise taxes on the Super Committee by the way, gave the Democrats their ultimate dream — taking 100% of all dollars earned from every single person who makes $200,000.00 a year or more — we still wouldn’t close Barack Obama’s budget deficit. There’d still be a gap.

That leads us in two directions no one in Washington wants to go. Either start raising taxes on the middle class or start cutting significantly from the federal budget.

Because no one in Washington outside of the real conservatives are willing to do either, the Super Committee, the Budget Control Act, and every statement to every reporter by every leader of either party is all smoke and mirrors.

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  • davesinsanantonio

    nt

  • nathanalbright

    Or how many in Greece, in Italy, or other places? We are between the scylla of acting by the grim and ugly truth and the charybdis of having to do what is necessary to win elections. I’m not sure there’s a path that can avoid either pitfall left, and if there’s one now, there won’t be one by the time we realize it is time to act. We are in a moment that calls for massive sacrifice on the part of someone and no one appears willing to go first for (justified) fear that they will merely be taken advantage of by all of the other free riders and handout recipients.

  • http://www.doctor-bob.biz rsklaroff

    …that everyone wanted to start their August vacations ASAP, thereby giving BHO the borrowing-ceiling elevation that he craved…to last into 2013.

    I had railed against this, if for no other reason than the automatic Defense cuts could jeopardize national security; although we now know the down-grade occurred thereafter, it could not definitively been predicted that this was inevitable.

    Therefore, the key-question is whether the GOP would be placing itself at-risk regarding the POTUS/Congress elections next year, were a strong stance to be adopted ASAP against pending Appropriations bills.

    *

    I will be chatting with a local Congressman tonight, and I will present to him a proposal that the GOP start tooling-up NOW for the prospect that the Holidays may be spent in D.C.

    If another extension of unemployment-reimbursement is in the offing [by 1/1/2012, if memory serves], then the pressure will be again placed upon potential-grinches, and all R-candidates for the GOP-POTUS nod will be forced to address the realistic prospect of a shutdown.

    Presumably, having “learned from mistakes” [such as not prioritizing military-pay], the GOP has learned that the immediacy of these issues must TRUMP projections of what might transpire at the end of next year; America’s $-status could collapse in the interim, with culpability to be spread by the D’s in as “bipartisan” a fashion as possible…for the buy-in documentation will have been thoroughly documented.

    For example, imagine the $-status of America if bail-outs had NOT been provided to EU-banks; the flexibility would have been expansile. Similarly, it is mandatory that the GOP assume no responsibility whatsoever for the potential-crash of the US Economy…as Wall St. presaged yesterday…predicated upon Federal Irresponsibility.

    In short, the risk is too great for the possible-rationalizations to be subjected to the meat-grinder of punditry; the GOP must do what the TEA Party Movement has awaited…APPLY “fiscal responsibility” instead of promising its initiation in 2013.

    All spending bills originate in the House, which is GOP-controlled. Anyone who rationalizes-away this Constitutional responsibility by claiming “we only control 1/3 of the government….or 1/2 of 1/3 of the government, whatever”…this individual will be proclaiming intellectual/behavioral BANKRUPTCY.

    The TPM must not slumber; these punters must be called on their inconsistencies.

    The GOP must update and pass the Ryan Budget [or a reasonable facsimile thereof] and remain firm.

  • http://www.planettron.com NickDeringer

    We are headed for meltdown and no one has the guts to put in the radiation suite and go into the reactor to fix the leak.

    We won’t learn our lesson until there’s a full economic collapse.

  • iidvbii

    Our ship is hemorrhaging, the decks awash in a sea of debt. The wise sages all predict despair and our elected leaders? Half argue knee deep in wave crests determined they be viewed victims of the others stupidity. While the rest man buckets pouring water into the hull quickening our demise. No amount of proof or failure can dissuade them their happy task. Kind of makes me feel like a mute screaming into a hurricane. Where has our sanity gone?

  • GreyCloak

    n/t

  • renl57

    No other politicians dare to acknowledge the truth.

    Half of the Federal budget now goes to entitlements and social safety net programs.

    http://tinyurl.com/89ot5ps

    And that’s going to get worse as the population ages. By 2050, the Census Bureau estimates that 20% of Americans will be 65 years old or older. And half of those will be 90 years old or older, drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits for 25 years or more.

    You could zero out the entire Pentagon budget and still not be able to balance that kind of budget. You’re either going to have to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes.

    But it’s impossible to say that without inviting near-hysterical attacks from both the Left and the Right. The Left won’t tolerate shaving one dime from entitlements, and the Right won’t tolerate increasing taxes by one dime.

    The Supercommittee’s failure is a symptom of how deeply divided the nation is on this.

    I’ve concluded it’s not going to get solved without pressure from the outside. Greece wouldn’t reform if the E.U. didn’t force them to.

    And the U.S. won’t reform until China forces us to.

    It’s not going to happen any other way. Seniors vote in such huge numbers that no politician dares to go before them and talk about SS and Medicare openly.

  • GreyCloak

    … And was also tempted by the Sirens of lobbyists and defeated the myopic Cyclops (or was that Jason?)

    In the end, he simply killed all the sycophants who aspired to acquire his government’s riches by taking over its administration. Where’s the problem?

    “The rich” have to sacrifice taxes, “the poor” have to sacrifice handouts, The lobbyists and party hacks who write the laws have to go back to their “Great American Novels” for a while.

  • romeg

    of ceding certain arguments to the Democrats and liberals, namely, that the answer lies, at least in part, to “revenue enhancements or increases”. We must, somehow, educate everyone that simply finding new sources of revenue, regardless of how it is accomplished, is not the answer. Rather, we must face the reality that the perpetual notion that government spending shall always increase over some baseline number was never sustainable over even the lifespan of a single generation of Americans, let alone in perpetuity, as the liberals would have us believe.

    The federal budget is rife with give-away program that encourage and reward sloth and idleness and punish success and productivity. The Ryan Approach needs to be expanded to ferret out these components of the federal budget and the entire federal government needs to be restructured so that this eternal drag on the U.S. economy is eliminated.

    The Tea Party Movement, though it may not realize it, has only just begun its work. “The woods are dark and deep and [we] have promises to keep and miles to go before [we] sleep”.

    Thank you, Dr. Sklaroff, for your insights and encouragement.

  • renl57

    When FDR promised Social Security and when LBJ promised Medicare, they didn’t think about what would happen in the 21st century with a very different demographic.

    That’s understandable. It’s asking too much of our elected officials to think ahead 45 years or 80 years. (Can anyone here predict what the world will be like in 2091???)

    But here we are, with the average life expectancy now 78 years of age and increasing, with more and more seniors living longer and longer, with a declining birth rate. And our entire social safety net has to be rethought and redesigned.

    It won’t happen. No matter who runs for office, whether they’re liberals or conservatives, NO ONE is going to admit that the game is up.

  • GreyCloak

    Actually, I won’t be eligible for SSA or Medicare for another coupla years, but I hope Medicare will reduce the $20,000 a year I have to pay for Private Medical Insurance.

    I hope for a few years of support from the kids, but I’ve told them (and they believe this, politicians) that SSA won’t be there for them …. they’ve already started saving in private accounts that they won’t be able to access for forty years.

  • GreyCloak

    Congress are jellyfish: no spines.

  • ohiohistorian

    But believe that AFTER the “cuts”, it leaves Defense with an increase. Defense has actually grown by about 25% since 2006 (from 652 to 832 Billion). The cut will take them down from $872 in 2010 to about $785 Billion, which is about the same as in 2008. So, where is the “big” defense cut, Erick?

    Same with all of the other “cuts” if I read them correctly. So the cuts that were Draconian merely nibble at the rate of growth. How are those CUTS? We need Republicans like we had in 1948 that actually CUT the budget. Boehner and his band of charlatans that masquerade as budget hawks should be called on this as a lie by someone. Erick, you have the microphone. When will you do so?

    People like Rand Paul, who are talking $9 Trillion just by freezing the budget, are dismissed as kooks. Ron Paul, the “budget hawk”, only calls for $1 Trillion in 1 year, about the same. Where are the REAL cutters in Washington?

  • partyof1

    It was put in place because as Erick said, congress could not control itself. So yes the super committe is a diaper. And a leaky one at that.

    Now it all stinks to high heaven.

  • nathanalbright

    That much is pretty obvious. But we as a whole, or at least a majority of us, have to agree to do it–perhaps a supermajority because of all the kicking and screaming from those who are addicts on the teat of government aid. I’m not sure we as a people have enough courage to man up and woman up to what we have gotten ourselves into. That is all.

  • nathanalbright

    …to admit the game is up is to commit political suicide (and fairly rapidly), but not to is a slow death vainly praying the “dinosaur’s prayer” of seeking more time while extinction becomes ever more a certainty.

  • GreyCloak

    FDR didn’t do a bad thing. But some spouses of WWI vets only retained their $50/mo benefits up into the seventies. If you retired before 1935, SSA didn’t so much apply.

    LBJ saddled us with Medicare and “The Great Society,” including “Welfare” that condemned an entire generation (maybe two or three) to economic servitude. Clinton (D) and a Republican Congress eased this burden and excuse on the American people.

    I don’t think Congress will get it, but the young people may consider it. In some societies, the old folk are let out to Polar Bears or opium dens. We might start with some Members of Congress.

    Note: the game is up when the money runs out. It has.

  • iidvbii

    Today showed me how broken everything really is. What’s worse is I believe we have a president who was rooting for the failure. Validated in his mind anyway his ability to lay all his failures at The feet of congress in his bid to retain the presidency. I can’t for the life of me understand why he wants the job. He clearly can’t stand Americans, appears to hate our history, traditions and values. What could possibly motivate him to want to continue in an endeavor he is so ill equipped for, one for which he has failed so miserably?

  • billstanley

    The House / Senate could not reduce deficit spending, so it punted several months to the super committee. The super committee then punted a small reduction to January 2013. Meanwhile, Czar Obama and tax-spend big-government politicians are driving the U.S. bus closer to the same cliff that Greece and Italy plunged over. During the first 33 full months of Czar Obama’s reign, the national debt increased by $4.36 trillion to $14.99 trillion, at an annual rate of $1.59 trillion. The increase in the last 12 months was $1.32 trillion. www.newsandopinions.net

  • GreyCloak

    __Robin Williams

  • theone3434

    We need to stop electing officials based on their party affiliation and start electing them on their ability to get things done. As pure and hardened as we may want to have everything done according to the party we belong to, it will never be that way…which is a good thing and how our government was set up to be. There HAS to be a compromise on some levels. That means that revenue on the more fortunate of us needs to go up (it’s at a historical low), eliminate loop holes and deductions that benefit the few and insanely profitable companies, lower the overall tax rate on individuals and corporations, means test medicare & social security benefits, cut defense where we are able too, launch education programs that tie to unemployment benefits (and drug testing), eliminate super PACS and limit corporate lobbying, completely revise wage and benefits to congress (they should get the average of their state’s private employees). Why can’t we get sane people on the left and right to get together and show Congress what it means to get things done?? The true leaders in this country are never the ones in power…it’s the people. The only way to save us is for WE THE PEOPLE to stand up and fight for what is right.

  • swi2522

    and everyone in washington knows it that is why nothing will be done about the deficit. cutting federal workers pay and benefits by 30 or 40% and the overall size of the gov by the same percent is necessary
    obama has done the opposite and that is grow gov by 25% so the conclusion is and can only be that he intends to collapse the the economy

    that his real change

  • Marcus_Traianus

    The President now has his whipping boy; Congress. Anything to deflect from his miserable, inept, amateur handling of our country.

    So go ahead, Mr. Obama. Divide the country further, spread the hate, envy and fear. Promulgate an environment of chaos. In other words, continue to show us you are against traditional American values and prefer a civil war to proliferate destructive, socialist ways that are known failures to bringing us together as a nation. Continue your attempt to deflect blame on those who want to fix things.

    Unlike you, we are ready to fight for this nation and bring her together. To create a better future for our families and our neighbors, no matter what their level of income or choice of employer may be.

    None of this future involves you or your co-conspirators in the Democrat Party. We will fight to the end with the greatest tool we have- our votes.

  • freedan

    was imaginary. People are real. The debt is real.

    So, what is your solution?

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    It seems that Beltway fever is stronger than most tea. I suspect the only answer is a strong conservative President that strikes electoral fear into the hearts of congressmen.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    are our only hope to get the right things done.

  • http://www.doctor-bob.biz rsklaroff

    …is the last line of this article:

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-congress-next-20111122,0,6053596.story

    “House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has faced increasing difficulty in getting his rank-and-file to vote to fund the government, and such a proposal would probably need Democratic votes to pass.”

  • geoph

    “Republicans have caused this failure of the Super Committee”, the Left will say – which surprises no one but the Republicans in Congress.

    The GOP Congress is just a Rube Goldberg experiment set up by the Democrats for their entertainment. ?How else can we explain the well established but complicated path our Representatives travel? The Dems know exactly how to arrange the series of triggers. All they need to do is periodically start the ball rolling to end up with increased spending passed and the GOP left Holding the bag with egg on their face.

    Do we see an omnibus spending bill in the future?
    What chance is there we will see a reduction to any of the 7 appropriation bills still floating around?
    That we shall see the next CR pass by December 16, should surprise nobody – except for some of the Republicans who are voting to pass it!

  • dajeeps

    If only because Obama wants to run against a “do nothing” congress, specifically “do nothing” House Republicans, and it was therefore necessary to ensure nothing is done. One can get the idea it was a set up from the continued drumbeat of “do nothing congress” from House Democrats on the floor. As usual, politics and party before what’s good for the average Joe. They have no answer for what happened with a “do too much of the wrong things” congress when they had super majorities, but I guess that doesn’t really mean anything to them.

  • Common_Cents

    The challenge is how to keep the tea party elects from being assimilated by the DC machine before we can get more reinforcements in there for critical mass.

    Hopefully it will be continuous progress even though we have some major leakage along the way.

    We need to attack the DC culture and break it down. How? I don’t know, but its time to start discussing it.

  • johnt

    Temporary naturally, they usually are.{?} When The O talks about sacrifice for “we all”, just what do you think he means? Or Kerrry’s statements about taxes. They’re in heat, like a dog rutting. The egregious moron Patty Murray has at least stuck to the tax the millionaires line, crap that it is.
    Like a drunk at the bar, they have to have “one more”. Plus there’s always the pure joy of causing and maximizing pain.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    one man with courage makes a majority conservative President that wins a landslide. Newly elected glorified yea/nay voters, ie Congressmen, get co-opted too quickly for any long-term strategy to work, especially given our dire straits.

    But I am for trying to elect reliable reps with courage.

  • rickdeckard

    “This is how liberalism dies, with finger pointing.”

    Short version, in the end, when it becomes apparent that there is not enough of other people’s money to solve all the world’s ills and injustices the only obvious solution will be…more of the same. We are at that point. Redistribution is moving from diminishing returns to negative returns and the liberals are out of ammo. But that won’t stop the campaign. It’s all they know. That, and blaming all unintended consequences on the opponents of their enlightened policies.

    The prognosis isn’t for a peaceful return to a government by and for the people, with strictly defined powers and responsibilities.
    As the marxists are fond of pointing out, those in power never relinquish it willingly. Today’s ruling class is a national, not a federal, government, where the power is shared between progressives and autocrats. They will run what’s left of the constitution through the shredder before they admit that the Rube Goldberg monstrosity they have built might be the least bit shaky.

    As my dad used to say,”This looks like ten miles of bad road”.
    To that I might add,”With a checkpoint at the other end, manned by armed guards”.

  • ihateliberals

    The problem is Liberal republicans. The RINO’s and the Liberal republicans since the Bill Clinton era have been voitng Liberal. since 1996 the congress as a whole has been voting only 40% of the time for conservative issues. Right now the House has a majority of Republicans but yet since January of 2010 have only voted for conservative issues 44% of the time. we don’t have any conservative leadership tht can make the hard decisions. Even if all 80 Tea Party people had stood their ground it would not be enough to over throw the republican elites. We have to get rid of the John Boehner’s, Olympia Snowe’s etc and elect very strong Tea Party types if we want to see real change inthe spending etc. liberals no matter the party are spenders and big government people. The bottom line is we have to stop sending the old guys back. john McCain in the senate is a RINO at best. The numbers i have presented come from the Heritage Foundation that tracks the voting records of all of congress. 40% conservative is not going to stop the run-away budgets.

  • jaykali

    The electorate encourages this type of behavior bc reward it with our support (votes/money).

    Another thing that is frustrating is that the liberal news I am hearing is saying this is about the Republicans not letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Why didn’t they let them expire during the lame duck session in 2010? You had the votes and yet we extended them. The Democrats always want the Republicans to walk the plank for them and then they get what they want AND Republicans are the ones who take the political hit for tax increases, see George HW Bush.

    I listened to an NPR story this morning ab how the deficit issue was all Bushes fault, detailing for several minutes up to 2008 how wars and tax cuts were to blame and then in 1 brief sentence said (paraphrasing) “and it got much worse in the last few years”. So it is funny how liberals just gloss over the last few years to quickly as if they are irrelevant. So hyper spending doesn’t count bc it was in reaction to the spending that occurred over 8 years. That’s logic for you.

    What could be bad news is that all we are going to have for the next 12 months are battles over budgets and tax cuts that will likely not change the status quo but will just be ab political posturing.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    So it is not just liberal RINOs. The problem is a lack of courage once even many conservative tea partiers get up there.

    The odds of raising up one man with courage as President is more likely than raising up filibuster-proof majorities in Congress.

  • cwfoster

    We need to realize this is going to be an ongoing, uphill fight. Electing ONE conservative president, or a super-majority in both houses of congress for one term is not going to make everything right again. We need to take, and maintain control of all the above for the foreseeable future to try and BEGIN to undo the effects of 70+ YEARS of progressive interference in the Constitutional Republic’s workings. YES, there are those who will say/do ANYTHING to get elected and we should be wary of those creatures (Mitt Romney is the first that comes to mind). We will undoubtedly make mistakes, and get a few in office, and the appropriate response is to replace them the very first election cycle they come up. There needs to be a few laws passed that would be best if they were Constitutional amendments, but would be sufficient if they required a super-majority to repeal, and a roll call vote. One would be to make it illegal (even retroactively) to enact a law that applied to the American people that exempts Congress. Second would be a NATIONAL term limit. I am not anti-term limit, but I am against Red States enacting term limits while Blue States refuse, so that the only people who know how to ‘game the system’ are those we need to get rid of. That gives them an unfair advantage, and anyone advocating term limits that only apply to conservatives are hurting our cause. Finally, we need to educate the public on the ‘facts of life’ That taxing the wealthy will NEVER meet the current levels of spending addiction that prevails in Washington, that ONLY spending cuts and entitlement reform can do it.

  • jussmartenuf

    Come on Erick, stop your lying. Everyone knows the Dems do not want every dollar in the country made over 200 grand. You do a disservice to your low information audience who will pick this stupidity up and believe it, just like they believed death panels and Obama being born in Africa.
    It was doomed to fail because the Reds want to protect all their billionaire contributors and punish the middle class to do it.

  • paladin1

    the new members is so disappointing but not necessarily unexpected. Some fell away because of pressure to get with the “master plan” of the leadership, not realizing that there is no master plan other than compromise and/or fold. Others were never really conservatives but played on the tea party theme and the anger of voters to get elected. The half or so that have held have shown the true courage of their convictions and should be lauded and supported. It is incumbent on conservatives to evaluate our own representative’s votes, determine whether or not he moves his respective branch of Congress to the right, and replace him/her if they have not. Some may only need the threat of a lesson to get back with the program; others need to be booted out and replaced again. On top of dealing with this lot, we also have to work to increase the conservative voice by taking Dem seats in 2012. It is a daunting task in overview but we must take it in small pieces; state by state and district by district or we will never see the change. I opined some time ago that to elect Romney would set the conservative cause back a generation because it would solidify the move of the Republican Party, under the guise of conservatism more to the left. Only a strong conservative president (Perry!) can succeed in pushing the conservative center more to the right and bring those who have strayed back into place (at least the ones who don’t get replaced in 2012).

    GC’s point is well said; one man of courage as President is far easier than strong conservative majorities in both houses of Congress.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    stated brother.

  • drsheilahere

    It should not have been necessary if Obama had done the will of the people which was to stop spending like a shopaholic. “Obama’s. It’s Most Unbecoming.” educate/circulate: one term only.

    http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/1017868/sheila_dunnells_phd.html

  • jimmyneutron

    As bad as some of them are, our only current hope is through the Republican party.
    Dems lie all the time claiming to be pro life, pro fiscal responsibility, etc, but when push comes to shove they vote the progressive party line every time.

  • jussmartenuf

    Ultra right wing organization. Please don’t be so naive as to expect the unadulterated truth from them.

  • gcards

    That leads us in two directions no one in Washington wants to go. Either start raising taxes on the middle class or start cutting significantly from the federal budget.love what you do ,do what you lovenike kobe