BREAKDOWN: Sens. John Kyl (R.-Ariz) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), both members of Congress’ so-called deficit-reduction supercommittee, give their bleak progress report on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday. (AP)
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WASHINGTON — Congress’ supercommittee is a super failure.
The co-chairs of the bipartisan panel tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by a Thanksgiving deadline will release a joint statement today declaring their mission an utter and complete failure — unless an unlikely 11th-hour agreement is reached, officials briefed on the matter said.
Chairs Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) took to national TV yesterday to all but throw in the towel on reaching a deal to put America on firm financial footing.
“Nobody wants to give up hope. The reality is, to some extent, starting to overtake hope,” Hensarling confessed on “Fox News Sunday.”
He said the “reality” is that the Democrats and Republicans on the panel need a deal by tonight in order to have it ready for a supercommittee vote by the midnight Wednesday deadline.
And there is no deal in sight.
Congressional inaction will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years — beginning in January 2013 — which include slashing $600 billion from Pentagon programs.
The rest of the automatic cuts, targeted to hurt favored GOP and Democratic programs, will be spread across domestic nonmilitary spending and include a 2 percent reduction in payments to Medicare providers.
Congress could pass legislation to change the cuts at any time.
What’s worse is the possibility that the supercommittee’s failure will roil Wall Street and prompt yet another downgrade of the US credit rating.
But Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi downplayed that scenario.
“I don’t think many expected much to come out of the process,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “At the end of the day, I don’t think there’ll be a significant market reaction.”
Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for the stalemate.
Democrats accused the GOP of refusing to raise taxes on the rich. Republicans charged that Democrats wouldn’t reform budget-busting Medicare and Social Security programs.
And the White House showed no interest in intervening, as President Obama prepared to pin the blame on Republicans as he campaigns for re-election in 2012.
Murray said Republicans wouldn’t agree to get rid of the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich.
“The wealthiest of Americans, those who earn over $1 million a year, have to share, too. There’s that line in the sand, and there aren’t any Republicans willing to cross it,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a key negotiator on the supercommittee, said that among Democrats, “there was an unwillingness to cut any kind of spending at all unless we had trillion-dollar tax increases.”
“It’s been enormously frustrating for me, and for my colleagues,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”