1. Less public respect for Congress
2. Automatic Budget Cuts: "Sequestration"
3. Really annoying rhetorical blame spin
The core mission of Congress is to understand, to compromise and to legislate within constitutional parameters. They do things that are important to me like pay me, equip me, and send me to war. But a cosmic combo of factors is yielding ineffective outcomes from a pretty important pillar of our checked and balanced Democratic Teepee of Liberty. (epic sentence Fail?)
The United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction or "Super Committee" was created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 which averted a national sovereign debt payment epic fail in September. The mission of the Super Committee was this: recommend legislation by Nov. 23rd that would cut "discretionary funding and direct spending" by $1.5 trillion through 2021 through some combination of budgeting and revenue increases."
This isn't just a routine partisan budget battle (although tactics and outcomes appear eerily similar). There is a point to this committee and it's a really important one. Most analysts think that the federal government has a serious debt problem that requires immediate attention. This committee is part of that effort to arrest the dangerous imbalances in our national fiscal situation.
Tonight these folks will release a joint statement admitting their epic legislative fail: they will not meet the Nov 23 deadline with any agreement.
- Patty Murray, Washington, Co-Chair
- Max Baucus, Montana
- John Kerry, Massachusetts
- Jon Kyl, Arizona
- Rob Portman, Ohio
- Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania
- Xavier Becerra, California
- Jim Clyburn, South Carolina
- Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
- Jeb Hensarling, Texas, Co-Chair
- Fred Upton, Michigan
- Dave Camp, Michigan
The restating of those entrenched positions — on a day that was supposed to mark a historic bipartisan breakthrough on mopping up a potentially cataclysmic fiscal mess — was yet another clear reminder that, despite all their super powers and declarations that failure was not an option, the supercommittee members never got more than halfway to their $1.2 trillion target — and hardly even considered a path toward a “grand bargain” of $4 trillion or more, which is what most economists view as the minimum 10-year deficit reduction required to start putting the national financial house in order.
Legislative representatives have the luxury of posturing and debate. But the military still has a mission regardless of the outcome of the budget "battle": fighting actual battles, securing the Korean peninsula, securing international freedom of the seas, defending US interests and Allies. What affect does this impasse have on them (us)?
Todd Harrison with The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (boring name, important work) puts into context some of the real impacts that the Sequestration Trigger will have on the DoD.
- FY2013 DoD budget will fall roughly 11% to FY2007 levels
- "War Funding" is exempt from these budget caps
- Enforcement of cuts doesn't kick in until 2013 so budget levels will remain unclear
- The Sequestration cuts from peak FY2010 levels are on par with historical post-conflict drawdowns after Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War
The reasons why Congress remains so unpopular/ineffective are really complicated and partly structural. Lots of members of congress are working really hard to to do the right thing in a chaotic environment. A compromise could have been a good thing for the country and a good chance for members of Congress to improve their reputation as an effective institution. Instead, this is again, a pretty clear epic fail.
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