Republicans are calling for President Obama to jump into the deficit-reduction talks gripping Washington, reflecting the widespread view that the congressional supercommittee is now headed for a failure.
Lawmakers and congressional aides familiar with the deliberations say the talks have reached a hard impasse, with Republicans locked in an internal struggle over whether to agree to higher tax hikes to cut a deal.
“It’s hard to see us getting a deal unless he comes in at the last minute,” Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said of Obama, who is on a nine-day trip to the Pacific and not scheduled to return to Washington until Sunday.
It's not really surprising that this committee is going to fail. They just kicked the can down the street when they set up the committee in the summer. Congress made the mess, let them fix it. Obama doesn't need to get involved, he can just sit back and watch the congressional roosters come home to roost.
Kate wrote: It's not really surprising that this committee is going to fail. They just kicked the can down the street when they set up the committee in the summer. Congress made the mess, let them fix it. Obama doesn't need to get involved, he can just sit back and watch the congressional roosters come home to roost.
Agreed... why would he do anything differently now... sitting and watching is his expertise. PRESENT.
FredHayek wrote: The supercomittee was the only chance the US had to make serious efforts to trim spending and the current debt load. America, the new Greece?
Bullsh**.
Failure Is Good - PAUL KRUGMAN
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a complete turkey! It’s the supercommittee!
For one thing, history tells us that the Republican Party would renege on its side of any deal as soon as it got the chance. Remember, the U.S. fiscal outlook was pretty good in 2000, but, as soon as Republicans gained control of the White House, they squandered the surplus on tax cuts and unfunded wars. So any deal reached now would, in practice, be nothing more than a deal to slash Social Security and Medicare, with no lasting improvement in the deficit.
Also, 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.
As soon as we get the GOP out of the picture... the Democrats will save the economy. Maybe the administration will come up with a clever Christmas present for the economy.
