With time running out for the Congressional “super committee” on deficit reduction to come up with $1.2 trillion in budget savings over 10 years, the Republican co-chair of the committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex., has all but conceded failure.
“Nobody wants to give up hope,” Hensarling said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” adding, “Reality, to some extent, is starting to overtake hope.”
Recommended Stories
He said that the committee is comprised of 12 “good people” representing both parties, but that they face a “daunting challenge” in the days ahead to reach a deal. Though the deadline is Wednesday, the law stipulates that any deal must be made public for 48 hours and scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which would put the actual deadline at midnight Monday.
Hensarling said that the Democrats have been unwilling to discuss any real fixes to the true driver of the nation’s debt — America’s bloated entitlements — and that they have insisted on at least $1 trillion in tax increases.
While Hensarling said they’d continue to work in the coming days, he also talked of the committee as, “a huge blown opportunity.”
Under the terms of the debt ceiling deal that created the super committee, a failure to reach a deal means $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to the defense budget and to Medicare providers such as hospitals and drug companies.
Asked by host Chris Wallace about whether the planned automatic cuts to the Pentagon budget would get enacted, Henserling noted that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned about the detrimental impact of such cuts on the military, and said, “Under the law, Congress will have 13 months to do that in a smarter, more prudent fashion and I plan to be part of that process.”
Rep. Xavier Bacerra, D-Calif., who followed Henserling on the show to represent “super committee” Democrats, was a bit more reluctant to concede failure.
“We’re deep into the fourth quarter, but there’s still time on the clock,” he said.
He also said that they could always release an “outline” of a deal by the end of Monday and have that qualify as 48 hours notice, and that the CBO has already scored various proposals, so they’d be able to turn over any estimates quickly should any deal be reached.
Bacerra said Democrats had put changes to Medicare and Social Security on the table, but would only agree to them as part of a deal that also raised taxes.
He also argued that in the event of failure, it would be the “wimpy way out” to change the triggers that were put in place by the debt limit deal.
