Is Super Committee Failure a Good Thing?
By Wednesday, the so-called “Super Committee,” a bipartisan group of legislators, is supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits. Almost everybody expects the effort to fail. The result: automatic across-the-board spending reductions called “sequester.” Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
On the left, Paul Krugman says “failure is good.” On the right, Phil Gramm says that in failure there is a “silver lining.” Surely somebody is miscalculating, and it probably isn’t Gramm. E.J. Dionne observes that if Congress did nothing there would be $7.1 trillion in deficit reduction (primarily through the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and already legislated reductions in Medicare spending), in contrast to $1.2 trillion of sequestration. Ezra Klein endorses that view and provides the breakdown.
What about the fear that across-the-board spending cuts would harm defense spending and other vital programs? Gramm says that the law governing the Super Committee contains a little-noticed provision from the old Gramm-Rudman budget rules: In the face of sequestration, Congress can pass better budget-cutting provisions on a majority vote, with no filibuster. Avik Roy provides additional explanation.
Generally what I’ve gathered is that the far left and far right both thought failure was optimal. The left because they assumed a deal would mean draconian cuts and the right because they assumed a deal would mean tax increases. Both sides of the spectrum were very fearful of their side compromising too much on principle. The effects that are yet to be seen revolve around consumer confidence. What hasn’t been discussed as much is the potential for another credit downgrade now that the public is, yet again, witnessing their leaders’ inability to work together and solve a dire problem.
We are missing the holistic view of this debate and failure to act. On this issue we have had a bipartisan debt commission created by the President that saw no action, a summer long debate ending in gridlock and an increasing the debt limit, and the “final” attempt to negotiate with the super committee resulted in no deal…and there is any good from this? The icing on the cake is to reverse the mandated cuts for failure to act.
Now are options are to either reverse the only standard meant to hold lawmakers feet to the fire, or have devastating cuts to the wrong areas of the budget. I don’t see a silver lining or good in failure. What it only highlights, is again on the world stage that the American lawmakers cannot act when it has to. We are the nation who cried wolf on debt talks, why should anyone take us serious?
The fact we need a Super Committee to make tough decisions that every Congressman should be prepared to make is of itself a bad thing! The decisions are only tough because past Members of Congress pandered to get votes or failed to perform due diligence before voting.
It sounds like the Super Committee is mere political grandstanding for the general public. People want to see that they are trying to address the deficit(s). If its failure can help pave the way toward entitlement reform, then there is some good stemming from the committee’s failure.
At some point though, the long-term issues will have to be addressed.
Congress needs to bring the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission plan up for a vote. It hasn’t been voted on it yet, it was bipartisan, and it was the President’s own commission. It is very similar to the Toomey plan that was leaked.
If you agree, write your representatives and ask them. The plan at least deserves a vote.
The $1.2 trillion in cuts will happen in spite of the Super Committee failure, so that’s good. But Congress missed an opportunity for dramatic entitlement, tax and budget reform, forced to happen with an up-or-down vote, without amendment or filibuster.
Sometime in late 2012 or early 2013, Congress will have to raise the debt limit again. Maybe they can try again to create another Super Committee to reform entitlements.
I suppose it could be worse: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68914.html