Sooperdooper Committee turns a FAIL and DU yawns.

[Stinky The Clown]

No, I'm not chiding DU. I'm suggesting it is simply indicative of how much people have started to see the government as increasingly irrelevant. I just scanned the Greatest page and one must go all the way down to 19 votes to find the first mention of the committee's failure to reach an agreement.

I actually think this is pretty funny. The Congress has an approval rating well below 10%. This is one more example of how obvious it is they truly earned that rating.

How bad will we all get hurt come 13 months hence when the even batshit crazier mandatory cuts go into effect.

[RKP5637]

1. I bet their approval rating sinks even lower now ... n/t

[Rex]

2. I think most of us here were expecting that outcome.

Congress is a JOKE to most people...and they should be working 24/7 to fix their image through ACTIONS.

[tularetom]

3. Sheeeit, everybody and his dog knew it was going to fail

I mean, you don't see many posts on DU announcing that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning either, but the fact that the super committee was going to take a giant dump was just about as certain as that.

[MilesColtrane]

28. Not everybody predicted failure.

Many here predicted a deal with sizable cuts in Social Security.

Indeed, many here believed that this was the sole reason the Democrats proposed the supercommittee.

[onethatcares]

4. I don't know what the mandatory cuts entail except that defense

finally gets a chunk cut.

Is there a list circulated as to what the social cuts are?

[Autumn]

5. It was a foregone conclusion from the

very beginning. We knew it would fail.

[tsuki]

6. Everyone is too busy chiding #OWS for not having all the solutions to

worry about Congress.

[Liberal Veteran]

7. It not so much a yawn as it is resignation that republicans won't compromise on revenue increases.

It's not exactly late breaking news which side of the 1% / 99% divide the republicans serve.

That's part of the reason OWS came into being.

You could characterize it more accurately as "We know THIS government where the republicans are free to stonewall everything is broken".

[politicasista]

8. Not really, there was a thread

with a response saying how the Dems "caved and sold us out", not to mention smearing the same ones that support liberal causes. The GOP knows how to do work for us for sure.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. There were actually several other threads. But none of them got much play.

[politicasista]

17. ok n/t

[Horse with no Name]

9. I think the idea that there are other remedies to our problems

that don't rest in THEIR failure as employees is starting to take hold.

[Eric J in MN]

10. Thank Goodness it failed.

There was a chance of an agreement to raise revenue just through fees, and to cut Social Security (by changing the inflation-calculation.)

[malaise]

11. But no one here expected it to work

It was a circus

[gratuitous]

12. In this case, no deal is preferable to the bad deals

And while I won't go so far as to say that this was the Democrats' cunning plan all along (failure of the superdooper committee), the way is now clear to let the Bush-era tax cuts ride off into the sunset with grovelbot. Naturally, there's still 13 months left for congressional mischief, but doing nothing is actually the best course, and with Congress as currently constituted, it's right in their wheel house.

[rhett o rick]

14. I agree. I see this as a victory that the Democrats didnt compromise away

Medicare and SS.

[FrenchieCat]

15. Failure Is Good By PAUL KRUGMAN

Failure Is Good

the committee will fail to meet that deadline.

If this news surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good.
<>
any deal reached now would almost surely end up worsening the economic slump. Slashing spending while the economy is depressed destroys jobs, and it’s probably even counterproductive in terms of deficit reduction, since it leads to lower revenue both now and in the future. And current projections, like those of the Federal Reserve, suggest that the economy will remain depressed at least through 2014. Better to have no deal than a deal that imposes spending cuts in the next few years.

But don’t we eventually have to match spending and revenue? Yes, we do. But the decision about how to do that isn’t about accounting. It’s about fundamental values — and it’s a decision that should be made by voters, not by some committee that allegedly transcends the partisan divide.

Eventually, one side or the other of that divide will get the kind of popular mandate it needs to resolve our long-run budget issues. Until then, attempts to strike a Grand Bargain are fundamentally destructive. If the supercommittee fails, as expected, it will be time to celebrate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/krugman-failure-is-good.html?_r=1

Why The Failure Of The Supercommittee Is Not A Bad Thing
November 20, 2011 by Matthew Dickinson

The debate over the budget is really a debate over political values and the future direction of the nation’s budgetary policy. It is not a debate that should be resolved by legislative gimmicks that allow members of Congress to avoid making hard choices, and from being held accountable for those choices by the voters. And, in fact, in the next several months legislators will face several more difficult decisions, including whether to extend unemployment benefits and whether to allow payroll tax cuts now in place to expire. In the meantime, legislators from both parties now have an opportunity to prepare their case in the run up to what is shaping up to be the most consequential national election in several decades.

There is no guarantee, of course, that the 2012 elections will send an unambiguous signal regarding how to address the nation’s budgetary woes. In the 2010 midterm elections, however, we saw how a grass-roots Tea Party movement rooted in opposition to government bailouts, increased spending and growing deficits produced one of the biggest partisan reversals in the post-World War II era. More recently, similar anti-corporate sentiments spawned the “occupy Wall St.” movement which may yet develop into a potent electoral force. Who knows how these sentiments will play out in 2012? With so much at stake, I’d rather take my chances with the electoral process than have members of Congress hide behind legislative gimmicks designed to provide political cover.

The supercommittee (apparently) has failed. Let the real debate begin!
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2011/11/20/why-the-failure-of-the-supercommittee-is-not-a-bad-thing/


How Republican Tax Intransigence Sank The Super Committee: A Timeline
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/21/373979/republicans-taxes-timeline/

Still Rooting for Failure? You Bet.
It's not possible to achieve fiscal balance, which is not the same as a balanced budget per se, without higher taxes on middle incomes, which Democrats haven't supported, as well as more aggressive control of health care costs. But Democrats have been far more honest and reasonable about this than the Republicans. After all, they enacted the Affordable Care Act, which will start the process of controlling health care costs -- and in a way that preserves core commitments of Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans responded, and continue to respond, to this effort with grotesque demagoguery about what the law will actually do.

And this pattern is an old story, as Paul Krugman reminds us today. It may seem like ancient history now, but in the late 1990s the federal budget was actually in surplus. The strong economy had a lot to do with those surpluses, but so did a series of balanced efforts at deficit reduction, dating all the way back to the administration of President George H.W. Bush -- who famously went back on his "no new taxes" pledge in order to help shore up the federal government's finances.

But Bush became a pariah within his own party for signing that deal. And when his son took office, eight years later, he insisted on squandering those surpluses on tax cuts for the wealthy – in effect, destroying the good work that had come before. Given that history, Democrats would be fools to offer huge concessions now. It'd be bad for them and, more important, it'd be bad for the country.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/97610/super-committee-fail-deficit-tax-bush-krugman-ppaca

No, `both sides’ aren’t equally to blame for supercommittee failure

Here’s why the supercommittee is failing, in one sentence: Democrats wanted the rich to pay more in taxes towards deficit reduction, and Republicans wanted the rich to pay less in taxes towards deficit reduction.

Any news outlet that doesn’t convey this basic fact to readers and viewers with total clarity is obscuring, rather than illuminating, what actually happened here.

I agree with those who have argued that supercommittee failure doesn’t really matter all that much, and that the obsession with the deficit is itself misguided and makes solutions to the actual crisis at hand — unemployment — far less likely to happen.

But since the press is going to be obsessing over the supercommittee’s failure for days to come, and since we will be inundated with reams of bogus false equivalence reporting about it, it’s worth stating as clearly as possible what really transpired......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/no-both-sides-arent-equally-to-blame-for-supercommittee-failure/2011/11/21/gIQAj31ehN_blog.html


Republican Anti-Tax Stance Softens Ahead Of 2012 Election
WASHINGTON — The GOP's image as a rigidly anti-tax party is softening. Spurred by federal debt worries in Congress, the shift conceivably could reshape the Republican Party's brand ahead of the 2012 elections, forcing tough decisions by its presidential candidates.

Some of the party's staunchest fiscal conservatives have surprised colleagues by saying targeted tax hikes are acceptable if they lead Democrats to accept deep government spending cuts.

Whether or not Congress' deficit-reduction talks succeed, the Republicans' offer has touched off a debate unlikely to end soon. The altered stance would upend party orthodoxy, which holds that deficits should be tamed entirely by spending cuts, with no tax increases.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/17/republicans-taxes-2012-super-committee-debt_n_1100238.html


THE FAILURE OF THE SUPER COMMITTEE ONLY MEANS THAT THE 2012 ELECTIONS WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER.... BECAUSE WHOMEVER COMES IN IN 2013 WILL BE ABLE TO VETO THE AUTOMATIC TRIGGERS....AND MAKE CHANGES, AS 2013 IS WHEN THE TRIGGERS WILL TAKE PLACE. KEEP THE REPUBLICANS IN THE MAJORITY AND GIVE THEM THE WH, AND THAT IS WHEN WE WILL HAVE A DISASTER ON OUR HANDS.

[Stinky The Clown]

26. What? . . . . Am I on the watch list?

:shrug:

[FrenchieCat]

29. Your thread is on the list of threads in the "Discuss" mode on this forum that I am a member of.....

If you don't want to discuss the actual issues you raised, I understand..... ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2lvItpXCo&feature=share

[Stinky The Clown]

32. Sparkly heard that and went back to her youth, slow dancing with the cute guys.

[FrenchieCat]

35. We are more alike than we are different.....

Sparkly may like this one from the same group as well...
awesome vocals....
I Just saw them in concert a few months ago....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m4X7SuuxxoA#!

[Logical]

53. You are almost a parody of the blind Obama supporter!

[woo me with science]

42. "Better to have no deal than a deal that imposes spending cuts in the next few years. "

From the article you just linked.

Better to let the whole thing go than vow to implement the trigger.

[xchrom]

16. Recommend

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. It's not that they're irrelevant, it's that they're incapable of doing anything good.

Paralysis will at least prevent them from doing more harm.

[Major Hogwash]

19. I didn't yawn -- I farted in your general direction!!!

The Super Duper Committee is not dead, it's just pining for the fjords!!!!

Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!!

Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!

:rofl:

[jberryhill]

20. Because this was expected

[Aerows]

21. Well, at least thanks to Congress

we know pizza is a vegetable.

[Warpy]

22. Actually, not reaching an agreement was the best outcome we could expect

because we were all terrified that those old maids in pants they chose as Democrats would raise the retirement age to 80 starting immediately (go back to work Gramps!) and institute some form of silly vouchercare instead of Medicare.

Most of us are pleasantly surprised by the impasse. It means that even the most tepid of Democrats won't let them gut basic services for the elderly in order to continue to fatten the Pentagon.

[GoCubsGo]

46. That's a really good point.

I was starting to think that the Dems would cave toward the end, like they almost always do. And, I thought I was about to be especially disappointed in John Kerry. But, I am happy to see that they didn't. I was surprised that they held tight, and even more surprised when Harry Reid started trash-talking. The Dems did themselves a tremendous favor by not caving here. Now, the whole country gets to see who supports them, and who supports the wealthy and the Pentagon above the people. For the dense few who hadn't already figured that out, it should be as plain as day now. If they don't get it now, they're pretty much hopeless.

[madinmaryland]

23. Pretty much par for the course with this congress.

[neverforget]

24. i am happy that this abomination failed.

[Lasher]

25. That's not a yawn, it's a sigh of relief as far as I'm concerned.

The trigger mechanism includes http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/08/deficit-the-most-important-players-in-washington.html">$500 billion in military spending cuts over this decade. We need to cut military spending much more than that, and not just for fiscal considerations, but it's a step in the right direction. I do not believe a Supercommittee recommendation would have included this much of a military spending cut - or for that matter, any at all.

The trigger mechanism does provide for domestic spending cuts, but our biggest social programs are excluded from these reductions. I don't think the Supercommittee would have condoned this exclusion, had a consensus been reached.

The trigger does not include any much-needed revenue increases, but that could be easily rectified if Obama were to veto any measure that provides extension of any part of the Bush/Obama tax cuts, which are to expire at the end of 2012. The problem with that is, although Obama has said that he would not again sign a measure that extends these tax cuts, he will.

[SoCalDem]

27. When the names were announced, we knew the outcome

[TheKentuckian]

30. We are too busy celebrating a least painful form of a loss we could get after rolling over

to the deficit hysteria.

We are only shrinking the economy some and will get some military cuts that we ideologically desire but can't afford right now as we can't take the reduction in demand but we could have come out even worse due to the "sly" maneuvering of our "leaders".

[Major Hogwash]

31. What the fuck??

Military cuts that we can't afford??
What the hell are you talking about??

[TheKentuckian]

36. That those dollars are not be re-directed into the economy and since the cuts

do not happen in a vacuum, the most likely outcome is further shrinkage of the economy.

Your terminating jobs and taking money out of an economy with a deficit in demand and high unemployment.

I'm all for substantial cuts to the military budget, I am not so fond of making the broader economy worse. Cuts in military spending should temporarily be redirected into our infrastructure and emergency relief programs but that not being the case, it is counter-productive. Start stacking up the lost decades, we aren't going to shrink our way to treading water, much less prosperity.

Much of this is all a sham anyway, the only real long term driver of debt is health care and we are loathe to do anything structurally in that area so we have no tools to control the system and as a consequence it will make little difference what piddling we do now.

[Major Hogwash]

43. Wow, you are a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, aren't you??

Most of what you said sounds like it came from Ron Paul's website.
I guess we should just spend our way into prosperity like your hero, Hoover.

[TheKentuckian]

48. There is nothing in the libertarian tradition or even the fake versions taken up by TeaPubliKlans

that in any way mirrors what I said there. You are throwing shit at the wall an hoping for some to stick in a few eyes, at best.

Or is casting weak, apparently completely uninformed, and and thoughtless aspersions a hyper clever way of explaining how these cuts in a demand depression and a time of high unemployment don't increase unemployment and reduce demand?

You aren't re-purposing these dollars into other areas where they can be more stimulative so you are taking money out of a sick economy, you are making bad worse. Moving the resource could actually multiply the impact of the money since some kinds of spending have a greater multiplier effect than others but just cutting the spending with nothing to replace the demand can only be counter-productive.

The military is weak stimulus but there is no way that a half trillion can be replaced with nothing and we even see treading water and certainly almost no chance of improvement.
We aren't discussing anything terribly complicated here, if you can see beyond numbers on a page at all.

[Major Hogwash]

49. That's exactly what Ron Paul has been preaching.

You are really poor at hiding your intentions here.

[TheKentuckian]

50. Ron Paul's said that saying that military savings should be re-purposed to infrastructure and aid?

and that we should not contract the budget while we have high unemployment and lack of demand?

That is interesting, how about a link? If that is what he is pitching then I need to listen to him much more closely rather than dismissing him as a crank.

[Major Hogwash]

51. Yes.

In every single debate. For the last 6 months!
You need a link?? Google his fucking name, he has an entire website!!

[TheKentuckian]

52. You made the accusation, back it up. I think you are just talking shit because I never

have heard Paul talking about funneling money from military cuts into aid programs and rebuilding the infrastructure and if he did then explain what the problem is and what is not beneficial economically.

I don't think you can even begin to explain your position but I like surprises...surprise me.

[Major Hogwash]

54. Hahaha!!!!!!

Of course it's all on Paul's website, just look it up.

[TheKentuckian]

55. You seem to be "in the know" about Paul, enlighten us and explain your opposition.

Not to Paul but to the specific economic strategy in particular, whether or not it is also espoused by Ron Paul at this time.

[sendero]

44. I agree..

.... but wishing for any positive outcome from the crew in Washington is an exercise in futility.

[EFerrari]

34. Unfortunately those cuts will likely be to benefits and not to purchases.

[The Straight Story]

33. Those cuts won't happen. Congress will vote to undo those cuts, McCain already working on it

for defense.

Smoke and mirrors.

[kudzu22]

37. It was just political theater

Just an excuse to get away from the debt ceiling impasse and kick the can a little further down the street. Both sides intended to use the failure to reach a deal in their next campaigns against the other side.

[Raine]

38. It was a foregone conclusion, it's all for show

they play their fucking little game. I have no use for the lot of them. :puke:

[Capitalocracy]

39. It wasn't that surprising. And don't be surprised, either...

if they go back and prevent those military cuts (at least any portion of them that aren't cuts to soldier pay and veteran care)

[Modern_Matthew]

40. The only relevant thing we have left in America is OWS. nt

[awoke_in_2003]

41. it will not fail...

most cuts are going to come from social programs, and as Gomer Pyle used to say "Surprise, surprise, surprise"... NOT. I will work as originally intended by the elites.

[blindpig]

45. It hardly matters...

We are fucked if it passes

We are fucked if it fails

We are fucked and then some if those bipartisan legislators get their $4T way

Democracy, hahaha

Capitalism uber alles

[JoePhilly]

47. It might be because this was about the 10th time Social Security was positively, absolutely

going to be slashed to the bone.

That was the predominate prediction here since that committee was formed.

And for about the 10th time, it didn't happen.

The Dems and Obama were supposed to cave. They didn't.

So, we'll get a brief lull in the outrage.

Folks here have wanted the Dems to take a stand. Even if that meant doing nothing. They did.

Thus the silence on this topic, for now.