Obama administration quietly bracing for debt supercommittee failure

[alp227]

Source: Wash. Post

White House officials are quietly bracing for “supercommittee” failure, with advisers privately saying they are pessimistic that the 12-member Congressional panel will find a way to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit as required.

In public, however, the official administration stance is that failure is not an option.

“I don’t think it makes sense to anticipate their failure,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew said Tuesday. “I think it’s important that they succeed. The president made that clear in the calls he made on Friday.”

President Obama called the Democratic and Republican leaders of the supercommittee from Air Force One on his way out of town last week for an extended trip to Hawaii and Asia, and he has continued to urge action in his remarks on the road.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-administration-quietly-bracing-for-debt-supercommittee-failure/2011/11/15/gIQA0HOePN_story.html

[The Magistrate]

1. Failure By This Wretched Cabal Is The Best Outcome Possible From It, Sir

[gateley]

3. Well said, Your Honor. nt

[PurityOfEssence]

7. We now live in the land of constant threat

Or else. Or else.

Shut down the government every six weeks or so.

Those who brought this country to ruinous debt over the last thirty years now feign outrage at the state of affairs. Their agendum is clear: starve the government of revenues and use this as a justification to gut all programs that keep the less fortunate viable. Occam's razor and Norquist's bathtub rule our present day.

It simply can't be sustained in an economy where 2/3rds of the GNP is consumer spending. The serfs are tapped out. The old models no longer work. There will be no recovery unless people work and work for reasonable wages.

Pitting the less-fortunate against the truly unfortunate is a tried-and-true tactic promulgated by the Reagan revolution, but such schtick can only continue where there's some juice in the marrow. Such is long since gone.

Citizens United is the death of the Republic unless something truly extraordinary occurs.

I wonder about the mortgage deduction...

[sam11111]

10. Purity knows how to write! Keep posting. nt

Nt

[freshwest]

17. GOP wanted to remove the mortgage deduction in the tax deal. Saw it in a thread here.

No, I don't know which one. But we will continue in this mode until the basic philosophical issues are ironed out by OWS GA's. We have to change the way we view the world.

[roguevalley]

8. agreed, Magistrate. We have a super committee: the congress

what a bunch of scum they all are. ALL of them. By the way, Hi, Magistrate. :)

[diane in sf]

11. I agree, I can't see any outcome that I would find beneficial from the "super" committee.

[mvd]

25. Hi, Magistrate!

I agree; even the automatic cuts would be better than what they could ever agree on.

[No Elephants]

29. Wellllll, there could be some kind of deal to avoid the default defense cuts that

gives us lots of cuts where we don't want them, no cuts where we do want them, and no increase in revenues.

Remember, we've been seeing stories from Panetta about how the military cannot sustain cuts. Those stories are no accident and Panetta is no maverick. JMO.

[DJ13]

2. Please tell me the President isnt dumb enough to ever think a deal would be reached

That committee plan had failure written all over it the moment it was proposed as a means of abdicating responsibility for the screw job it was designed to do on the 99%.

[HDPaulG]

4. Dumbest idea by conceder-in chief -Obama ever...

Super committee by Republican's and some blue dog Dem's.

[karynnj]

22. Other than Baucus, the democrats are not blue dogs

[No Elephants]

32. To paraphrase a famous Democrat, That all depends on your definition of "blue dog."

Even at that, most people include more than Baucus.

Tester and Nelson, for example. And a number of members of the House are Blue Dogs, although a lot of them were sent packing in the 2010 midterms, either defeated or knew enough not to run. In fact, some apply the term "Blue Dog" only to members of the House (but I disagree with that.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition

And only God knows what Lieberman is. Not sure how to classify sanely someone who runs for Vice President and President of the Democratic Party, then campaigns for McCain Palin against Obama Biden.

But, if the definition of Blue Dog is too controversial, I'd settle for corporatist or center right or centrist or DLC type or New Democrat or Third Way or No Labels.

And, like Blue Dog, any of those terma apply to way more in both houses than only Baucus.

[karynnj]

35. I was responding to a post on the supercommittee

The 6 Democrats are not all "blue dogs" by any definition. Obviously, there are many Senators to the right of Baucus - with Lieberman and Ben Nelson being the most likely to cause anigna among the rest of the Democrats.

[EFerrari]

14. Agreed. This "bracing" bs is WaHo spin.

Nobody with circulation to their brain ever thought this would work.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

19. Yup.

It was a failed (on purpose) idea from the start. Now this makes way for even bigger cuts.

[No Elephants]

33. WaHo spin or the spin of Waho's source? IOW, WaHo or WhiHo?

[No Elephants]

30. We've seen" designed to fail" before. Or at least, "designed to be purely cosmetic."

The alleged mortgage relief plan, for one.

[sam11111]

5. defend SS...just memorize -- " 16 ... 33 "

Facts are ---

Top 1% have $16 trillion

(link was included as part of daily KOS)

--------------------------
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nxY_tso8jLcJ:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/04/789523/-Citigroups-Shocking-Plutonomy-Reports-h-t-Michael-Moore+plutonomy&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&strip=1

-------------------------------
The Wealth Report
Plutonomics ...
By Robert Frank, Wall Street Journal - Jan 8, 2007

... The nation’s top 1% of households own .... more than $16 trillion in wealth ...
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
The top 10% have $33 trillion

***************
Those are the key figures in the defense of SS, Medicare and Medicaid.
***************
16 ... 33
***********
NO cuts are needed. Zero, none, zilch, zed, nugatory, nihil, nada. NO cuts to anything. Leave grandma alone.

Note that in the bar graph you add the top part to the second part to get the top ten percent's share of the wealth. That is,
34.6% plus

38.5%
-------
73.1%.....is the percent of all US wealth now in the hands of the top ten percent of people.
( 45 trillion being the total wealth...though some estimates put it as high as 155 trillion...see Federal Reserve site)

(Discovery channel Sun last, Curiousity Series, put USA wealth at 295 trillion, well above many other estimates. Was aired Nov 13 '11)



In short:

The 1%have .....................$16 trillion.

The top 10% have............. $33 trillion.

[tclambert]

15. 73% is closer to 3/4 than to 2/3.

The statement in the graph that "the richest 10% own 2/3 of Americans' net worth" understates the situation.

I would also like to know how many trillion the poorest 50% own (you know, the people the Republicans say should pay more taxes). I'm guessing that number is pretty close to zero trillion.

[AntiFascist]

6. That's great news...

I think that means they will be forced to cut more $100s billions from defense budgets.

[bluestateguy]

9. Only Washington establishmentarians and newspaper editorial boards give a shit

I care more about Kim Kardashian than this.

[msongs]

12. we better hope he isnt preparing to sell out 300 million americans in the name of bipartisanship nt

[quakerboy]

13. What exactly does that mean?

"bracing". What does that entail?

Does that entail preparing to do PR on all the cuts?
Does that mean sending out quiet tendrils to the right persons that he is on board to quietly reverse the defense cuts?
Does that mean readying orders, as CiC to pull our troops back from wars and other unnecessary and expensive overseas endeavors?
Does that mean prepairing to cut loose all the Mercenaries on our payroll currently, and returning things like diplomat safety details and military supply chains to US military forces?

What exactly does that mean?

[izquierdista]

16. Shouldn't it be called a "superfailure"?

I feel so clairvoyant in being able to predict this.....

[OhioChick]

18. Better get a hold of this OWS movement then because triggers will force more people to the streets

[Hell Hath No Fury]

20. Yes, wasn't the "deal" that --

the Super Comittee find a solution or far more draconian cuts comes via a trigger?

Just as was planned from the beginning. :mad:

[OhioChick]

21. Yep and the super committee has a week left n/t

[FiveGoodMen]

24. ...and a weak left!

[wordpix]

36. yes but the trigger included huge DOD cuts & to that I say yea!

[DCBob]

23. They will fail and congress will pass some emergency legislation to stop the automatic cuts.

so predictable.

[neverforget]

26. What??? The sturm und drang of the summer was for nothing???

I thought we were all going to die by debt and deficit?

[DCBob]

31. it was for something..

to cause as much pain as possible to the President.

[No Elephants]

27. Rut Roh.

[blueclown]

28. The failure of the supercommittee is another example of the failure of our politics.

It is yet another example that our political system is hopelessly broken.

[Zorra]

34. I'm hoping this "failure" was due to an attack of good conscience. nt