What Would Super Committee Deadlock Mean to You?
9 days until the Super Committee deadline to cut $1.2 Trillion in spending. Their options are to significantly cut spending or to increase taxes. Prominent members on both sides of the 12 person committee have publicly said that they would not do either.
If no action is taken by the committee, the law mandates a default decision: The defense budget will be cut by $492 billion. Another $492 billion will be cut from health, education, drug enforcement, national parks, agriculture programs, and Medicare.
>>Explain the Super Committee to me in 3 minutes or less
What would deadlock in the Super Committee mean to you?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Steve Scott on -
Just one more justification to enact term limits on ALL elected offices!
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Permalink Reply by Denise Petet on
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Amen to that.
Honestly, I think more would be accomplished if 12 randomly selected anonymous people sat down in a room and looked over things....with no lobbyists, no press, no constituents, no friends, no buddies, just some practicality and common sense and a willingness to do a job rather than push rhetoric.
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Permalink Reply by Deena Larsen on -
More of what it would mean to the country. If the U.S. were a household, this is like saying, ok., since we can not decide how to spend our money, we will cut out half a bedroom, and then pay only 80% of our utility bills, telephone bills, etc. Pretty soon, this incompetent household would be out on the street with a cardboard sign.
Seriously, let's just cut 10% of our police and have the crime. Let's just not investigate or clean up 10% of the Meth messes and have people downstream drink the polluted groundwater.
But if we do this, let's be sure NOT to spend the money we'll need for extra prisons, hospitals, etc. Just let those folks go as part of the default decision.
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Permalink Reply by Stacy L. Carpenter on -
Good morning,
The view from private sector and impacts:
A small government committee charged with one task of immense importance that impacts everyone in the country can't get it together in the slightest way. As the deadline approaches, the likelihood of success is reduced. The perception that the "top" people are incompetent grows and filters to perception of other officials. If the top people can't function, what must the other officials be like? The lack of movement on the committee gives no reassurance to a business that a more stable future is on the horizon. As a company that is planning 3-5 years out on a 10 year plan, one can't tell what is coming for costs, policies, general market stability or trend. All assets go on lockdown, growth is on hold, companies go under and layoffs continue. Companies seek markets outside of the US to increase revenue and augment losses felt in the US. This does not help the US economy. Nor does it help foreign investors confidence when it comes to predicting a return on their investments if they invested in the US.
For citizens, this means higher incurred public assistance costs with lowered budgets for such services and a paradigm shift in what this country's culture is.
We're in a unpleasant and predictable cycle and it needs to be broken.
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Permalink Reply by David Dejewski on -
Good insight here. So much of a healthy business environment is dependent on stability. Money needs some assurance that it will grow and come out of any given investment better off than what it was when it went in. If it doesn't have those assurances, it tends to lie dormant.
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Permalink Reply by Neil Bonner on -
"I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." -- William F. Buckley (1925 - 2008)
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Permalink Reply by David Dejewski on
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That's a great quote. Very entertaining. Of course, William F. Buckley was full of great quotes. :)
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Whitaker on -
It would mean having to explain to people why unemployment benefits all stopped cold. While it's not hard-linked to the supercommittee negotiations - not being able to agree on this does not bode well for the program's renewal. The GOP will most likely take them hostage and it'll get hostile at work.
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Permalink Reply by David Dejewski on
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Wow.. this is a great insight into how this issue will affect you on a very tangible and local level. Thanks for sharing, Christopher!
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Permalink Reply by Ali on
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A huge problem with the "trigger" is that it appears to be an ATB. ATB's--especially as this one seems to be written--leave very little if any flexibility for an agency to manage reductions in a smart manner; an ATB at double or near double digit levels is basically like using a meat cleaver to perform surgery. As I understand the law; flexibility was built in for DoD to move money around to protect military personnel accounts; but no flexibility was built in for any agency to shuffle their cuts (ie, cut more from one account and less from another but come to the same overall total) around in order to protect civilian personnel accounts; a grave oversight on the law's part--or for that matter, to shuffle the exact distribution of their cuts to protect critical and mission-essential non-personnel accounts; another grave oversight on the law's part.
Sure, 9 percent is bad. Very bad. But what's worst of all by a factor of a thousand is that it's a 9 percent across the board. If there was instead more agency discretion in where to take the cuts (more from one account, less from another, etc; within an agency), things might be a heck of a lot less catastrophic.
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Permalink Reply by David Dejewski on
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That's a good point. Across the board (ATB) cuts can be like using a broadsword to remove a splinter. Surely there would be unintended casualties if new controls were executed in that way.
Of course, there are some who might say that a cut across the board would be less damaging than taking no cuts whatsoever. How could the US get on with a speedy correction if they allowed local level control over the cuts? Wouldn't local control authority slow things down? What do you think?
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Permalink Reply by Ali on
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I don't think allowing some agency discretion would "slow" things down at all, especially considering that in one case they already built such flexibility in; and simply neglected to give it to everyone. All you'd have to do to greatly minimize impact to agency missions without "slowing things down" is to grant the same flexibility given to DoD (to increase cuts in some accounts / decrease cuts in other accounts in order to protect military personnel accounts) for military personnel accounts to DoD and all other agencies for civilian personnel accounts as well (and possibly for critical non-personnel accounts). I consider it the greatest travesty of the Budget Control Act that no flexibility was granted for civilian personnel accounts as was granted for military personnel accounts; and it's going to leave a LOT of agencies--DoD included for that matter; as they do employ civilians--in a huge world of hurt that could have been avoided if such had been included in the law.
As for the impacts of such a tweak; there would be few to none: Agencies would still be required to hit their bottom-line numbers (just like DoD is still required to hit their bottom line #'s; if they choose to exercise their flexibility to protect military personnel accounts, they have increase the cuts to other accounts to make up the difference and reach the same $$$), nothing would really change--9 percent would still be 9 percent. But rather than having to hit a critical, personnel-intensive account by 9 percent and cause massive RIFs (to the detriment of both agency missions AND the unemployment #'s); you could, say, choose to take a 20 percent reduction in a capital account or a less-than-super-critical project account; and only a smaller, doable say 3 percent reduction in staff-intensive, mission-critical accounts. Or even if an agency were all staff intensive accounts; they could still choose to take larger reductions in less critical accounts to ensure only small reductions in the most critical ones.
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