Senator Mark Warner says that if Congress fails to address the federal debt, then voters should sack them all:
“If we can’t get this fixed, you’ve got to fire us all,” Warner said. “I’m serious.”
If so, then perhaps we should invite the “Bobs” to Capitol Hill to begin the exit interviews:
The deficit-reduction supercommittee, stuck in a partisan deadlock, faces an almost certain collapse—raising the threat of disruptive military spending cuts and a resurgent public anger at Congress as it struggles with the basic tasks of governance.
Barring an unlikely, last-second breakthrough, the committee is expected to announce Monday that it failed to reach its mandated goal of writing a bipartisan bill to reduce deficits over the next 10 years by at least $1.2 trillion.
Someone must be blamed…how about Grover Norquist?
Senator Patty Murray, the Democrat co-chair of the committee, said Republicans had constantly cited Mr Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” for their refusal to consider higher taxes.
“His name has come up in meetings time and time again,” she told CNN, the broadcaster, saying Republicans were “more in thrall” to a conservative lobbyist than the needs of the rest of the country.
There’s a wide difference between being ‘in thrall’ and “employing a convenient excuse.” As for himself, Norquist is sticking to his guns, enjoying his moment in the spotlight and finding a way to make former Club for Growth president Pat Toomey look like Bela Abzug:
Republican committee member, Senator Pat Toomey, a former chair of the anti-tax Club for Growth group, proposed raising $350bn in extra revenue over 10 years by ending a series of existing tax deductions.
His proposal had a strong conservative flavour, as Mr Toomey demanded that the committee reduce rates and make permanent the tax cuts introduced by George W. Bush in return for shutting the loopholes.
But the plan raised Mr Norquist’s ire nonetheless.
“They had a very good idea – all they have to do is to take out the goddam tax increase part of it,” he said.
Staying in character, right to the end.
And so the tiresome and pointless exercise of the supercommittee comes to a grinding halt. Now we have the ugly curtain call, full of anger and excuses.
If we take even half a step back and look at it all, we see that the committee’s job was to find $1.2 trillion in savings over a decade (though none of it would begin until 2013). In the meantime, the government’s debt has risen to $15 trillion. The feds will spend more in interest payments each year than they proposed to save. So even had the committee met its goal, we still would still be losing ground. The Treasury has a handy chart showing just how bad the situation really is. In FY 2011, total federal interest payments topped $454 billion. The supercommittee was charged with finding $120 billion in yearly savings.
Fire them all? Senator Warner may be on to something…
Brian Schoeneman offers his take on this mess here.
