For some, gridlock on debt is a benefit

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Gridlock, as much as it’s derided, may be the best outcome for the elderly, health-care providers and poor people in this fall’s fight over further deficit cuts.

A new congressional supercommittee, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, has until Thanksgiving to propose $1.5 trillion in budget savings over 10 years. Every federal program and tax is a potential bull’s-eye for the panel.

If it doesn’t produce such a package, or Congress doesn’t pass its plan by Christmas, up to $1.2 trillion in spending cuts would be automatically unleashed on hundreds of programs. It’s meant to be a scary prospect, but it doesn’t threaten everyone.

Some programs have been exempted from the automatic cuts: Social Security, the Medicaid health program for the poor, Medicare health benefits for the elderly, veterans’ pensions and many programs for people with low incomes.

Now lobbyists are calculating whether programs they fight for would fare better under an unpredictable package from the supercommittee or in the round of automatic cuts that would be triggered if its mission fails.

“That’s a question a lot of people are asking,” said David Certner, legislative policy director for AARP, the country’s largest senior-citizens’ organization.

The uncertainty is one of the new wrinkles for lobbyists and their clients in the deal that resolved this summer’s debt-ceiling battle between President Barack Obama and Congress. The two sides ended up agreeing to extend the government’s borrowing authority and start trimming its ever-growing $14 trillion pile of IOU’s.

Lobbyists also must gauge how to get their voices heard above the din as virtually every interest group in Washington tries influencing the supercommittee’s dozen members.