The congressional supercommittee deadline is fast approaching. There has to be a deal in place by Wednesday in order to avoid $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts.
So why does there seem to be a complete lack of urgency, from the committee, from anyone on Capitol Hill, from the White House?
That’s an easy question to answer — the easiest question to answer, in fact, concerning our financial mess.
It’s simply because no one expects any deal to be made. And, it seems, no one ever did.
The committee was set up to fail. When the the 12-person committee was formed, it seemed pretty clear there were no real advocates for compromise on board. That’s because the leaders who appointed them weren’t committed to any real compromise.
In attempting to get to the $1.2 trillion number or, with luck, to a grand bargain number as high as $4 trillion, the central issue has always been taxes. Republicans want to do the cuts without taxes. Democrats say you can’t make the numbers work without tax hikes on the rich as well as with tax reform.
If there were real tax reform, the committee — and Congress — might also be able to take some first important steps on entitlement reform.
There was briefly some movement. It seemed that Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a committee member and a strong anti-tax-hike voice, was talking compromise. It never went anywhere. There was the letter from more than 100 legislators, from both sides of the aisle, asking the committee to go big. The committee never went anywhere.
So, what happened? The idea, if you’ll remember, was that an automatic trigger would force the action.
The committee is supposed to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in savings over the next 10 years. If it fails, the sequester goes into place — meaning $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts, half from the Pentagon and half from discretionary spending.
These across-the-board cuts are unpopular with most members of Congress and probably with many people not in Congress.
It turns out, though, the trigger hasn’t scared anyone.
There are good reasons for this. The automatic cuts aren’t scheduled to go into effect until January 2013 — after the presidential election and with plenty of time, the reasoning goes, to assure that the cuts never happen.
This would be more than kicking the can down the road. It is also kicking sand into the faces of the few people who still believe that politicians in Washington can accomplish anything. Could Congress, with its 9 percent approval rating, possibly drop any lower?
If no agreement is reached, it would be an abject failure as well as a broken promise to the American people. There is still time for a miracle ending. But not much time. Almost no time at all.
