DillontDesib posted an update: Font ResizeopinionLittwin: So the supercommittee failed now what,chanel bags?By Mike LittwinDenver Post Columnistdenverpost.comPosted:
11/22/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
OK, we've had our little fun. We watched the supercommittee flounder and flail or, if you prefer, founder and fail even as everyone knew from the opening credits exactly how this was going to end.
It wasn't really an epic fail. It was more like a sure-thing, slow-burn fail.
But it reconfirms our worst fears which is reassuring in an entirely unreassuring way. It means we were right all along. These guys really are gutless.
No wonder the 99-percenters are mad to be stuck out on the streets while the 9-percenters are strolling the halls of Congress,Longchamp.
The problem is that blaming everyone is exactly the same thing as blaming no one. If it makes you happy, you can blame Congress or the president or the media or toxicity in our political world or the politics-as-the-new-sports syndrome or all of the above. I prefer to blame Freddie Mac historian Newt Gingrich, who just called child labor laws "stupid," but that's another column.
But to get at what really happened, we have to look at why the committee failed to reduce the debt. We can start with the stakes there weren't any, other than the embarrassment factor. And I'm thinking that if your approval rating is at 9 percent,celine bag, you can't be any more embarrassed.
The automatic trigger doesn't get pulled until Jan. 1,http://www.celinebagrose.com/, 2013,Longchamp,On a recent scouting expedition aboard Poveromo s 28-foot, and Republicans are already trying to get the terms of the deal changed. The markets, which went down, may have been more about Europe than Congress. The bond markets actually went up. So all that was really at stake was the idea that this Congress could do something if pressed, and, of course, it couldn't.
Part of the reason for the failure is a fundamental difference in philosophies between those who think you can reduce the deficit while lowering taxes and those who can do the math. The math people understand that the Bush tax cuts are already one of the leading drivers in the deficit and that someone not the poor, who don't have much money,. As he came out of the coma, because, you know, they're poor has to pay more if you really want to reduce the deficit.
The trigger in cuts was a Republican idea to avoid you guessed it a trigger that would include tax hikes,http://www.saclongchamprose.com/. The supercommittee was formed because Republicans wouldn't agree to a compromise that raised taxes for income over $250,000 a year. And the supercommittee comes to its ignoble end in exactly the same way.
You have to wonder or maybe you don't how we got to this point where compromise is a dirty word.
Two pressing problems, which we hoped the supercommittee might take care of, include the survival of the payroll tax cut, which Obama wants to increase, and the continuation of longer-term unemployment benefits. Both are important, if you believe economists, in boosting economic growth. Both will face ugly, bruising fights.
Joblessness is, of course, our immediate problem, particularly for those who don't have one. The debt, which is being financed at an incredibly low rate, is a long-term problem. It just passed the $15 trillion mark, which shows how much of a problem it is. It must be solved. It doesn't have to be solved today. (See supercommittee's failure to do same.)
What we have now is a stalemate. We knew that, but it's time we act on that knowledge before we get to the next run at a government shutdown, which could produce another do-nothing supercommittee.
I would have liked to have seen the supercommittee go big, as they say, and take on entitlements and tax reform. But that was never realistic. There was no chance to pass something so fundamental that could get past the Senate, the House and the White House,chanel bags. We've been given road maps from a couple of commissions, which have been actively ignored,celine bag.
Nothing will happen before the next election, and maybe nothing should. The problem is, elections haven't been a great guideline so far. We've had three consecutive swing elections, but none of them provided anything like what you would call a mandate.
We need to decide what to do should we cut and cut or should we tax the wealthy and cut?
It's a simple question, for which we desperately need an answer. You'd like to think by November 2012, we'll have one. What we know is if we don't, we can't blame it on the supercommittee.
E-mail Mike Littwin at ,with lower prices for natural gas liquids driving the decrease..
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