Debt Supercommittee Fulfills Its Promise To Make Everything Worse
Hooray, the Dow Jones decided to start its day with a two hundred point crash in apparent surprise at history's least surprising news ever, that somehow a few months of mindless bickering between the twelve members of the bipartisan congressional deficit-reduction "supercommittee" has -- how is it possible? you ask -- officially amounted to abject failure according to some sad announcement members will submit in lieu of a proposal by the assigned Thanksgiving deadline. Oh sure, there may have been one or two humans somewhere eating record amounts of acid in celebration of their last unemployment checks who hopefully dreamed for a hot second there was some chance that this thing running America called "Congress" would actually manage to "govern," but like we said, that would take a lot of acid. Were these corrupt goons at least trying to come up with some kind of last-minute deal, just as a show of good faith?
Hahahahaha, no, they were on the teevee, blaming each other before the corpse of a budget reduction deal had even gone cold.
The Hill reports:
Earlier in the day, supercommittee members from both parties headlined Sunday news shows, expressing faint hope but little confidence that they could find $1.2 trillion in budget cuts.
In separate interviews, six supercommittee members also admitted that they had a tight window, and pledged to keep working until time had run out.
“I'm at the table. I want to solve this,” [Sen. Patty] Murray said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Here is a weird thing about physics, is that you cannot actually be on television talking to numbskull CNN anchors and be "at the table" at the same time. Details!
And Barack Obama, who steadfastly refused to have any part in the supercommittee's work throughout because eh, he already submitted his homework in the form of a jobs bill no one wants to pass, even fled to Asia to avoid any confusion as to where he was during the final days of the fictional "negotiations." So not his fault Congress blows! We look forward to the inevitable fundraising spam reminding us as much in, what, a few hours?
Ugh, and Obama wasn't the only one who wanted to avoid even geographic proximity to the panel's total failure.
From POLITICO:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told a crowd at a fundraiser last week that a debt agreement was a long-shot, noting that he had to be in Florida by Wednesday to brine the Thanksgiving turkey he got shipped there. Top aides to the Democratic and Republican leadership didn’t come to the Capitol over weekend, and neither did most of the members on the committee. Even as committee members said publicly they hoped for a last-minute breakthrough, the Capitol was virtually empty Sunday.
Boehner had not heard from Obama as of Sunday evening, aides said, and the White House refused to say whether the president had done any personal outreach or made any phone calls to committee members at the 11th hour.
Sorta makes you wonder if maybe it would better if they would just always stay away from Washington, all of them, forever? Oh well, Congress will now get to work on its real task, letting John McCain and Lindsey Graham dismantle the $500 billion in automatic defense spending cuts triggered by the supercommittee failure while equal automatic cuts to domestic programs benefiting the poor and elderly proceed quietly, as Jesus intended. [ The Hill / Politico / AP ]