The congressional deficit-reduction \u201csupercommittee\u201d said Nov. 21 it had failed to reach an agreement on slashing the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillion. That failure will supposedly trigger mandatory cuts to military spending and some social programs, starting in 2013.<\/p>\n
Or, perhaps, when pigs fly.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter 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\u2019s deadline,\u201d Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), co-chairs of the the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defeat is the latest sign of how hard it has been for Washington\u2019s political class to come up with unpopular tax increases or spending cuts to rein in budget deficits that have totaled about $1.3 trillion or more over the last three fiscal years,\u201d The Wall Street Journal reports.<\/p>\n
Really? Let us recall what got us to this pass. Back on July 31, Americans were told Washington insiders had reached an \u201chistoric compromise\u201d to raise the federal government\u2019s so-called \u201cdebt limit.\u201d (In fact, it has never limited anything.)<\/p>\n
Any member of Congress who wanted to limit the federal government\u2019s borrowing and spending had in hand, at that point, the mechanism to make that happen: simply vote against any deal to hike the debt ceiling.<\/p>\n
Instead, so-called \u201cfiscally responsible conservatives\u201d agreed to raise the borrow-and-spend ceiling, in exchange for a highly colorful and impressive handful of magic beans.<\/p>\n
What were those beans?<\/p>\n
As their first magic bean, Washington\u2019s big spenders agreed to hold a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment.<\/p>\n
An unwise version which Democrats should have loved — it set no cap on spending; it set no supermajority requirement for future tax hikes — drew only 25 Democratic votes and failed to advance out of the House of Representatives last week, which means it won\u2019t even be sent over for its planned burial in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n
Impressed?<\/p>\n
The second magic bean was the \u201csupercommittee,\u201d which just \u201cfailed\u201d — assuming anyone in the know ever intended it to do anything else. (Hint: Why would Democratic leader Harry Reid pack the Democratic side of the table with high-profile demagogues and standard-bearers of collectivism — John Kerry, Patty Murray — rather than little-known budget committee number-crunchers?)<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, members seemed to spend more time positioning themselves to blame the opposition than buying additional red magic markers to cross out more federal expenditures on their budget sheets.<\/p>\n
Democrats accused Republicans of refusing to \u201craise taxes on the rich,\u201d of course.<\/p>\n
In fact, Republicans were wise to turn down proposals which would have cemented huge and permanent job-destroying tax hikes immediately, in exchange for feeble promises of spending cuts \u201cto be phased in,\u201d mostly between 2017 and 2021, when the majority of those making such promises may not even remain in office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, an agreement proved impossible not because Republicans were unwilling to compromise, but because Democrats would not accept any proposal that did not expand the size and scope of government or punish job creators,\u201d said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.<\/p>\n
So now we\u2019re down to the third and last magic bean:<\/p>\n
Will even the modest promised \u201cmandatory spending cuts\u201d (remember, they\u2019re supposed to \u201cphase in over a decade\u201d) kick in as threatened, 13 months from now?<\/p>\n
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promptly said he wouldn\u2019t reverse the cuts. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said that he would feel \u201cmorally bound\u201d to honor the cuts. President Barack Obama said he would veto any bill to undo the cuts, saying there would be \u201cno easy off ramps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which sounds a lot like a coach or administrator at scandal-plagued Penn State saying he sees no reason to resign, these days.<\/p>\n
In fact, those \u201cmandatory spending cuts\u201d can be reversed by this or any future Congress at any time, by simple majority vote. Members wouldn\u2019t even have to announce they were doing so. They could simply, incrementally approve spending bills that fail to incorporate even such modest \u201ccuts,\u201d while making noises about \u201cstill being committed to bigger savings and revenue enhancements down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, in the supercommittee\u2019s \u201cfailure,\u201d Americans may have dodged more bullets than they realize.<\/p>\n
As part of the supercommittee\u2019s negotiations, it\u2019s reported members were tinkering with a plan to claim some \u201csavings\u201d from the current $6 billion in direct federal support payments to farmers — which would have promptly been replaced by expanding a SEPARATE $5 billion boondoggle, this one called \u201ccrop insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The good news is the secret farm deal seems to have died with the supercommittee. Farm state congresstitutes will now have to go back to spinning their schemes in a slightly less secret setting.<\/p>\n
For heaven\u2019s sake. If anyone in Washington want to trim spending and reduce the deficit, ending all farm supports, subsidies, and protectionist tariffs — and closing the Agriculture Department, for good measure — would qualify as a good start. Our current, wasteful, market-perverting farm policies were established to help cushion the loss when European farmlands going back into production caused prices for U.S. grains to fall — in 1920.<\/p>\n
Yet, under the guise of deficit reduction, this gang was working on a multi-billion-dolllar extension of FARM HANDOUTS?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The congressional deficit-reduction \u201csupercommittee\u201d said Nov. 21 it had failed to reach an agreement on slashing the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillion. That failure will supposedly trigger mandatory cuts to military spending and some social programs, starting in 2013. Or, perhaps, when pigs fly. \u201cAfter months of hard work and intense deliberations, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,5,38,44,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-elections","category-groundhog-day","category-money","category-taxation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-eS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":924,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions\/924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}