As the clock ticks toward next Wednesday’s deadline for the “super committee” on deficit reduction to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings, it’s looking increasingly likely that the panel will fail. Though that’s theoretically supposed to trigger automatic cuts in defense and Medicare spending, those won’t kick in until 2013. In other words, lobbyists for defense manufacturers, hospitals, drug companies, etc. will have a year to fight any cuts. Just to give you a sense of how pathetic a “super committee” failure would be, I created this chart, which shows how small the $1.2 trillion in cuts members are having so much trouble finding would be relative to the $44 trillion the federal government is projected to spend over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But the failure of the “super committee” raises a broader question, particularly if the triggered cuts get overridden: is it actually possible for Congress to cut spending? The problem Congress always runs into is that immediate spending cuts are seen as too disruptive, so even when members propose to reduce spending, they typically push for phasing in any cuts over time. Yet by doing that, they’re putting the actual task of implementing cuts in the hands of future Congresses. And history has shown that such cuts are often undone when it comes time to make them.