Fox News: "Deficit panel facing political, fiscal consequences without budget deal."
Really? Virtually nobody believes that the 2013 budget axe will fall since future Congresses are not bound by the intentions of the past. And I don't think the political consequences are going to effect the re-election efforts of John Kerry in Massachusetts or Jon Kyl in Arizona.
I was highly skeptical of this budget supercommittee since it carried the political baggage that was mostly muted in the first debt commission chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Still, I kinda hoped they would find some middle ground that got somewhere near the target of $1.2 trillion in savings. As this graph from the Washington Examiner demonstrates, that figure is almost a rounding error compared to the sum of federal spending over the next decade:
Depressing. As Casey Stengel once griped about another inept committee: "Can't anybody play this here game?"
2 comments:
Another graph, depicting the chilling fiscal consequences should the supercommittee fail in its sincere and necessary task:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/ezra-klein/StandingArt/donothingplancbpp.jpg?uuid=gWRquhH7EeGzpeoj2RvJbQ
Of course, that's not gonna happen, either, because Lockheed needs its sugar.
I agree with "doing nothing" - let the Bush taxes expire for everyone, restore the payroll tax, and let the "Doc fix" adjustment to Medicare payments finally take place.
None of those things will happen.
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