Supercommittee succeeded in finding targets

Posted Nov. 21, 2011, at 6:50 p.m.

The congressional supercommittee’s superfailure at crafting a deficit reduction plan is inexcusable. But despite the committee’s inability to come up with a bipartisan solution, its work was not a complete waste of time and effort.

The collapse of compromise came as each party clung to their strongholds, if the rhetoric being spun is accurate. For Democrats, it was protecting programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. For Republicans, it was not rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts. The success of the committee, then, was in identifying the key areas of focus.

The subject of this week’s The Maine Debate is how taxes might be raised to produce the new revenue sought by Democrats and how so-called entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid might be pared down to win Republican support. Join us here beginning at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 22 and weigh in with specifics on where and how new taxes should be levied and how cuts to entitlement programs might be made.

If the Democratic and Republican factions of the supercommittee were management and union locked in conflict, an arbitrator would know exactly how to proceed: water down the proposals from each side and call it a compromise. Done. In politics, of course, nothing is that simple.

Republicans are hoping to use the deficit, about which Americans are rightly concerned, as a rallying cry in the 2012 elections. Given President Barack Obama’s support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and his $800 billion stimulus program, it will be easy to add the failure of the supercommittee to the president’s liabilities.

On the Democratic side, the hope is to hammer home the view that the GOP is coddling the richest 1 percent and refusing to ask it to shoulder any more of the tax burden. In the face of exploding debt and deficits, their argument goes, it’s only patriotic to ask the rich to pay more.

Clearly, the tax cuts crafted by the George W. Bush White House and enacted in 2001 and 2003 must not remain the final word on tax policy. Those tax rates should not be treated as if they were tablets handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. Since the income tax was created, Congress and presidents have tweaked both rates and brackets.

The current top rate of 35 percent has been in effect since 2003, down from 38.6 percent in 2002 and 39.6 percent in 2000. Since 1913, no rate has been in place more than 10 consecutive years; from 1954 to 1963, the top rate was 91 percent; from 1971 to 1980, the top rate was 70 percent. In other words, historically speaking, it’s time to change the code to reflect a changing economy and changing times.

Social Security and Medicare also must reflect changes; specifically, changing demographics. The huge bulge of baby boomers who began reaching age 65 this year is the game changer. And people are living longer than ever before. Clearly, benefits to keep our elderly out of poverty and keep them healthy are important, but they must be reconfigured to meet these challenges. Means testing is one approach; raising the retirement age is another. Both are reasonable.

By most accounts, the two parties were willing to see defense spending and nonsocial service programs cut.

“Our Democratic friends were never able to do the entitlement reforms,” Republican Sen. Jon Kyl said of his work on the committee.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, one of the commitee’s co-chairs, said Republicans wouldn’t budge on taxes. “The wealthiest Americans, who earn over a million a year have to share, too. And that line in the sand, we haven’t seen Republicans willing to cross yet,” she said.

There’s an opening for the president or a leader or group of leaders in Congress to swoop in and carry a compromise across the finish line. What might that look like? Join us at The Maine Debate.

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Anonymous

The Democrats made serious concessions, such as raising eligibility age from 65 to 67 and the sort. The Republicans did not meet them at all. The only revenue offer they gave was one that eliminated write-offs and breaks for the middle class in order to lower the top income tax rates. But Occupy Wall Street are the ones engaging in class warfare? What a joke.

We used to have a functional government because both sides knew some compromise was needed to get things done. Somehow that has gone out the window, and governing has become about taking a stand regardless of whether the ship is sinking. Signing the Norquist pledge (to not raise taxes) which some in Congress seem to value above their pledges to the people and this country, should be seen as a conflict of interest, at the very least, and frankly not allowed. They can not serve the people and Grover Norquist at the same time.
Anonymous

The secret ingredient would be an increase in revenue, but of course the Right would have none of taking pennies from millionaires, couldn’t stand for that. One-half of one percent of all income over one million (that’s million) dollars is all it would take. But, then again, Congress would just waste it. My hope is they all understand when they are not re-elected.
Anonymous

The GOP couldn’t raise taxes on millionaires even one penny so now nothing gets done. Thanks GOP for always putting your Party and rich special interests ahead of the people.

We need to take the SAVE AMERICA pledge: I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN EVER AGAIN.
Anonymous

They are not interested in saving America, they are interested in themselves and their very wealthy buddies. It may be time to start boiling down some tar and rounding up some feathers.
Anonymous

Stop making super committees up with hard liners. If there are any members left in Congress or the Senate who can think for themselves (questionable), they should be the people on a super committee.

Here is one thing that should be used to raise income to the tax coffers. Stop allowing tax write offs on advertising of products NOT manufactured in the USA. When we allow companies to use advertising as a tax write off, business expense, and allow them to make the majority of their profit in the USA, but all of their products are made out of the country. Someone has to make up for that loss of revenue. Guess who that someone is.
Anonymous

The “supercommittee” idea is just a joke. The idea of the committee was to find 1.2 trillion dollars in reductions………Over the next ten years!

When the national debt is increasing at around 2 trillion a year at the moment, cutting 1.2 trillion…..in ten years……even if they could, would not even make a dent in the problem.

Folks we have a problem with government spending way more money than it has, that is going to get magnitudes worse, between now and 2020. There is no way we can possibly generate enough revenue to meet these promises.

There are those who believe government spending can never end.

They are going to find out, the hardest possible way, that this is not so as financial calamity is just around the corner for the USA.

Thinking that crooked Congress-crittters (that is most all of them, on both sides of the aisle!) are going to FIX ANYTHING is a joke!
Anonymous

Let us recall this past budgeting year.

Congress, including Republicans, passed a budget with huge defecits. It was known at the time that, in order to spend the money agreed to, especially due to continuing the Bush tax cuts, borrowing would need to be increased. Republicans then refused to borrow the money their own budget required, thereby generating the Bogus Debt Crisis.

Because resolution of the Bogus Debt Crisis could not be reached, the Bogus SuperCommittee was created.

Thanks to Tea Partiers, Congress is living in a bogus budget world. This can only be remedied at the ballot box next year.

The only way to leave the Tea Partiers, and all the Mad Hatters, behind is to vote the Republicans out.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7T3YNF6MG3FPEAVTFIJC44VQUI Dlbrt

If the Middle Class had the good Paying Union Manufacturing Jobs that the 1 % Inheritance Babies and thier Republican Hacks sent to Foriegn Countries then there would be a source of Revenue to pay the Bills.

Where as these 1 % Inheritance Babies elected to send Manufacturing Overseas TAX them instead!
Anonymous

Um, your “Super Committee’s” deliberations were conducted in secret.

In secret.

Deliberations over how to sequester trillions of taxpayer dollars.

Now, apparently, the heist of these trillions will be “automatic.”

And some say the “Super Committee” has failed.

Apparently, it is cheaper and more efficient to purchase a committee than a Congress.
Anonymous

What we need is another criminal war of choice paid for with a credit card.
Anonymous

President Obama could have changed the outcome if he had actually believed in change. He could have told his attorney general to enforce the securities law. He could have replaced the zombies at the SEC and told the new ones to apply all existing regulations. Before last year’s election, he could have used his legislative majorities to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and reinstate the Glass-Steagall act. He could have initiated the process of deconstructing the giant banks back into their separate functions – so that banking once again worked as a utility rather than a launching pad for colossal frauds and swindles. Not only did he fail to do any of these things, he didn’t even talk about it, or try. To anyone who still has the energy to be lied to over and over by a bunch of corrupt, broke, pathologically lying bureucrats, feel free to tune in.
Anonymous

As soon as they began calling the panel a “Super Committee”, I became an immediate skeptic. When have you ever seen a so-called panel of “experts” succeed in anything they are charged with doing? Breaking it down, “ex” means former and a “spert” (or spurt) is a drip of water under pressure. So, I guess that would make these guys former drips.
Anonymous

What a (insert proper expletive) surprise the special committee failed. I seriously doubt that there was a person in the world with an IQ above that of the “village idiot” that expected anything differently. If you are a parent and your spoiled rotten over indulged child has never received a grade above “D” all during his high school career do you really act surprised when the letter from the nice folks at Harvard arrives and starts off with the phrase, “Thank you for your recent interest……….”, you really didn’t seriously think he was going to get in now did you? Expecting this “super committee” which was made up of the stanchest ideologues from both sides of the political spectrum to solve anything was akin to the above mentioned Junior getting into an ivy league college. Our country is in big trouble and our elected leaders don’t give a damned. It is more important to pander to the special interest and spew the proper ideology then it is to care about The Country and her citizens. If you owned a company and it was going deeper and deeper into debt by the day, had seen it’s credit rating downgraded and showed no sign of turning around would you keep the current management, maybe even give them a raise? That is exactly what we have been doing. Our business, our government, has “fallen and can’t get up”yet we keep thinking that the people who caused it to fail, our elected representatives, the so called “leaders” are going to fix it. When the toilet is full of excrement the logical thing to do is to flush it.
Anonymous

Until we Americans understand and accept one very basic fact we will continue to watch our country circle the drain. What is that basic fact? Simple. Being a member of congress is a damned good job. . Just think you can go from driving a forklift at a paper mill one day and then be in Washington wearing really nice suits, getting haircuts from “stylist” and getting your picture in the paper or on TV all the time the next day. Oh and the pay and benefits are unbelievable as well. People hold doors for you, tell you how wonderful you are and invite you to all the really swell parties all the time. Hell if you are running a little late you can even call the airport and have them hold the plane for you. All in all it is about as close to a “dream job” as you can get. The only problem is that you have to get re-elected to keep it and that is where the problems come in. In order to get re-elected you need to find unimaginable amounts of money to finance your re-election campaign. But not to worry there is more money available to you once you become a member of congress then most Mainers knew existed. All you have to do is vote in a certain way and voila money flows into your campaign chest like water down the Penobscot in the spring. You go from being a representative of the people who originally sent you to Washington to representing those who really count. The people who can finance your re-election. Was anyone really surprised that the special committee failed? I seriously doubt it.
tag

The GOP does not “want” to cut entitlement programs, they understand that in order for them to survivie we “have to” reform entitlement programs. If money grew on trees in the back of rich people’s home, as the Dems seem to believe, then everything would be just fine. What the Dems seem unwilling to fathom is that raising taxes on the rich will solve nothing. It sounds nice to punish the rich, but the results will be trivial. What most of us (who are not a part of the top 1% but work for a living) understand, is that unless we stop spending, raising taxes on the rich will only lead to raising taxes on everyone. If you want higher taxes, vote for a Democrat.
Anonymous

Anybody operating on planet earth knows what caused the deficit. Bush tax cuts and all the extensions that disproptionately benefit the wealthy, unfunded wars, unfunded prescription drug plans to benefit big pharma, etc. To balance the budget on the backs of those that did not cause it is the true class warfare. Asking the working and middle class to pay for the treats given to the rich is going to be considered punishing the wealthy now? Nobody is buying that narrative. Sorry.
tag

According to Obama, letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those making over $250k would generate $70 billion per year in new taxes. The federal deficit is $1.3 trillion this year and growing. Where will the other $1.23 trillion come from?

And this does nothing about our soon to be $20 trillion dollar debt except allow it to grow even further out of control.

This is a spending problem.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SHNOU64ZBOBIKWUF5IM6WSH7WA entitled4life

I want to remind you that Obama now owns the Bush tax cuts, he lobbied to keep them and he got what he wanted. They should have expired and Obama would not allow it to happen. They are now the Obama tax cuts and he owns them. So vote republicans out if you wish, but your guy did not have the backbone to get the job done when all he had to do was let those cuts expire.
Anonymous

There was never going to be any consensus. The Republicans have one agenda and one agenda only and we know what that is. They have made no bones about it (McConnell et a). There was never going to be any consensus.
Guest

Our Corrupt Officials Need A Pay Cut

Our country is in a serious economic crises, and we need to see some leadership by example

*The President should not make more than $100k
*The Presidents staff should have a pay freeze until the deficit is resolved
*Every Congressman & Senator should make no more than $60 from their positions
*Every Congressional & Senators staffer should have a pay freeze until the deficit is resolved
*Everyone on the hill should have the same health plan as our troops, and yes, a politicians healthcare package covers a lot more than what we do for our troops.

But ya know, they wont, because regardless of their party affiliation, our leadership would rather cut SSI, our troops and other vital areas before they would give up some of their own pay.
Guest

Wrong

I have voted for both Republicans & Democrats, and later wished I hadn’t
Let’s face it, real change starts with term limits.
Can you honestly say any of our federal delegation should be reelected?
Anonymous

Dana Milbank column for later this week:
The end of the supercommittee affair|It was the political equivalent of breaking up by email.The supercommittee could have been the most celebrated relationship of our time: An equal pairing of Democrats and Republicans that was to have come up with the budget plan that would bring domestic tranquility for years to come. But the relationship never got past first base, and the committee members ended it Monday afternoon in a most perfunctory manner. At 4:24 p.m., just after the markets closed, House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, emerged from the office of Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican. “We expect an electronic statement from the co-chairs shortly,” he announced. Twenty minutes later, this digital Dear John letter landed in inboxes across the capital. “After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline,” the co-chairs, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, stated. The second part of that sentence was obvious to all who had been paying attention. The supercommittee, despite months of hope and hype, had made no progress toward an agreement. But the first part of that sentence was dubious: Hard work and intense deliberations? They had a few public hearings for show, but never got close to a deal and hadn’t even held a negotiating session in weeks. The supercommittee’s final day was typical. Both sides had acknowledged that their differences were irreconcilable, but they went through the motions anyway — not because they expected a breakthrough but so they could give the appearance that they had talked right up until their deadline. In the end, they dashed off an email and Kyl, the committee member who had done more than any other to assure its failure, tried to slip away from his office without being noticed. Kyl’s spokesman emerged from the office to take questions, and while reporters were talking to him, Kyl and his security agent slipped out a backdoor and ran for the elevator. “Why did it fail?” a reporter shouted. Kyl didn’t answer. The elevator doors closed on the cameras and microphones. It failed because Democrats wouldn’t agree to cuts in Social Security and Medicare without Republican concessions on taxes. Republicans wouldn’t budge, and so the committee was doomed from the start. That was already certain Monday morning, as Kyl and Democratic counterpart John Kerry circled the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building, visiting the various cable networks to assign blame to the other side. “Our Democratic friends,” Kyl told CNBC, thought “this was the opportunity to raise taxes, and it didn’t matter what we proposed.” “We put a hugely reasonable amount — with very painful reductions — in it, and they said, ‘no,’” Kerry countered on MSNBC. And yet the committee members pretended through the day that a deal might still be within reach — but a cursory inspection revealed this to be an act. Only seven of the 12 committee members were participating, and Democrats and Republicans were in the same room for little more than two hours. In the hallway outside of Kerry’s office on the second floor of Russell, a group of high school students from Atlanta watched about 50 reporters watching the closed door, waiting for a committee member to emerge. Every so often, a member or staffer would appear with a grim face and a crucial update, such as, “still working,” or “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” or “we’ll see.” The Republicans left the “negotiations” just after 1 p.m., never to return. While Democratic committee members continued to caucus in Kerry’s office, Republicans held their own session up one flight in Kyl’s office. Out in the hallway there, reporters joked that the senators were using the time to dump their stock holdings. Even at 4 p.m., Kerry was still playacting. “What do you have to say to the American people that are watching and looking at this committee about to fail?” a reporter asked. “Well, that’s your presumption,” Kerry replied. Minutes later, the presumption was confirmed, to nobody’s surprise. “Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences,” the co-chairs announced in their statement, “we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed.” Thanks, Captains Obvious. But you were the ones who were supposed to address it. Dana Milbank’s email address is danamilbank@washpost.com.
Anonymous

Where is the Assasin in Chief? Where is the leadership coming out of the White House?
Anonymous

top 1% pay 40% top 10% pay two thirds. how much should the rich pay when 49% pay no fed income tax
http://profiles.google.com/sdemetri Stephen Demetriou

Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. It should be left alone or strengthened by raising the income limit to 125,000 from 105,000.

A single payer health care system should be enacted.

The republicans should be lined up against a wall and… be hosed down with whipped cream, doused in feathers, paraded through the streets of DC for the fools that they are. (How I’d say it in polite company. I have something else in mind.)

Focusing on the deficit while millions are out of work is unconscionable. Idiots all, across the board.
Anonymous

On the opposite side, the Democrats can not find any cuts except the Defense Department, and the only thing they want is to raise taxes so that they can give more to their special interests.

It is time to understand that the government can not borrow enough money to lift the population of the country to an average financial level. It is impossible without following Marx and Engels. We have seen how well that works.

We need to face it, as the poor are helped and the middle class does not rise what really is occuring that the middle class is moving down. The rich will still be rich, but our much vaunted middle class becomes relativly poorer. If you tax the rich too much, they will just move somewhere else. I have already heard that the truly rich might just buy a country and run their holdings from there. they would then really pay no taxes. where would we be then?

We need to take control of the country back, pare Federal and State government to reasonable levels, take back the rights that we had before the federal government became so powerful and get our economy fixed.

The established Democrats and Republicans will not do it.
Anonymous

Both sides could have agreed to the others demands, The Repubs, by agreeing to a new method of taxation (Value added tax), which would provide a lot of new revenue in that about 45/50%
of us pay no taxes now. (The Porn industry, The Drug trade, at all levels, All the other mobster activities, Those many groups that do not believe in taxes period, and the underground economy, which is estimated at anywhere from 50 to 300 Billion a year, along with us others who cheat, fudge, or do whatever is required to reduce our tax liability. The Dems. could have agreed to some form of drug testing for those receiving welfare. I operate a rental business, and for years accepted section 8 qualified people, however after about five years i got out of the program because most of them had drug related problems, and i am sure other welfare programs have the same problems. But having said this, I do not believe those we send to represent us have any desire to help ‘We the People’, being more concerned about fund raising, to stay in the kingdom, while bestowing additional benefits unto themselves as fast as possible.
I have seen many comments relating to cutting their pay and benefits until they get this mess they created fixed, and agree with them. Its past time ‘We the People’ stand up, and say no more, for we have allowed them to become totally corrupt.
Anonymous

Or maybe the federal govt can make and sell stuff right here in the USA, with a nice markup, to help the budget hard-liners see the light:

http://info.apps.gov/node/19 - govt cloud computing products.
Anonymous

Wow! I feel really badly for that top 1%. What a burden! Probably living pay check to pay check.

Let’s cut everything else so we can make it easier on them. And wait… Even better. Let’s lower their tax rates even more.
And… even better than that – let’s get 9% off the top from every dollar that the poor people make/spend so we don’t get further in debt while we lower that huge burden on that 1%. Whew! I feel brilliant.
Anonymous

Not much is going to happen until after the election in 2012.
http://www.infowars.com Pat Riote

Republicans, Democrats… Two sides of the same coin. They get you to fight this pseudo left-vs-right junk and then pat themselves on the back over champagne and caviar. It’s like “professional” wrestling.
Anonymous

What gives you the right to take legally earned funds from someone to turn around a give it to someone else.
and yes you are correct, everyone should contribute taxwise, if not financially then through community service to this country. The only way the Democrats can receive votes is by allowing 1/2 the eligible population to pay no fed income tax. Its like a homeowner with no equity, they just walk away.
Anonymous

you must be talking about the union hack congressman from Maine
Anonymous

do you have nothing else other the rich are to blame. Top 10% pay two thirds of the taxes. How much should they pay? All of it? and then two thirds of the eligible voters won’t have a stake in the game. Is that the leftie end game?
Anonymous

so you’re saying that Halliburton’s funds are all “legally” earned. How about “fleecingly” earned.
What gives you the right to take 9% of “legally” earned money from working families whose employers “legally” pay them less than needed for food and shelter and transportation while paying nothing for vast sums of inherited money that probably wasn’t taxed to begin with (as in unrealized capital gains).

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Subject: [bdn] Re: Supercommittee succeeded in finding targets

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flat_lander wrote, in response to libconserve:
What gives you the right to take legally earned funds from someone to turn around a give it to someone else. and yes you are correct, everyone should contribute taxwise, if not financially then through community service to this country. The only way the Democrats can receive votes is by allowing 1/2 the eligible population to pay no fed income tax. Its like a homeowner with no equity, they just walk away. Link to comment

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