Failure of supercommittee is mark of shame on members

Working in secret, the woeful- ly misnamed supercommittee of six Democrats and six Republicans couldn’t agree on a plan that would reduce the budget deficit by just three percent — $1.2 trillion — over 10 years.

There was nothing super about this group’s performance, and every member shares the shame of failure, including the junior senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey, both Republicans who were elected last year.

Politicians are fond of saying government should function more like a business, and yet, what business, given a modest goal and a three month deadline to come up with a 10-year survival plan would accept failure from 12 of its top executives?

These representatives and senators were asked to arrive at a formula to provide a relatively small decrease in overall debt through cuts in spending and/or increases in revenue. And their answer was: “We can’t.”

We’d suggest that if the American people were given the option of firing the lot of them tomorrow, they’d be on the unemployment line.

Alan Simpson, the former U.S. senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, headed a deficit commission at the request of President Barack Obama last year. That group produced a plan for nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, but couldn’t get a final affirmative vote from a majority.

Simpson and Bowles issued a joint statement expressing their deep disappointment that the supercommittee “could not get a simple majority to vote for long-term fiscal responsibility and reform that would put our nation’s fiscal house in order.” There are those who suggest that Congress should now pursue a more aggressive course, something along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles $4 trillion plan rather than the minimalist goal set for the supercommittee. We would love to see that, but hold out little hope for success.

Bowing to their masters

The dynamics behind the supercommittee’s failure extends to the entire Congress and both parties. Democrats and Republicans are bowing to lobbying pressure from their traditional special interest groups, and individual members are more concerned about getting re-elected in the short term than saving the nation’s economy in the long-term.

Simpson told the Associated Press that he and Bowles have traveled the country in recent months spreading the word that solving the nation’s fiscal crisis demands spending cuts and tax hikes. He said they receive standing ovations from any crowd — right-wingers or left-wingers — because people are tired of hearing mush from politicians.

The difference between Simpson and Bowles and members of Congress is that Simpson and Bowles aren’t running for re-election. They don’t need millions of dollars in their campaign coffers and they have nothing to fear from the AARP demanding no cuts to Medicare or Social Security on one side and Grover Norquist waving his “no new taxes” pledge on the other.

The wrong message

The supercommittee was created out of necessity after Congress ran the economy into a ditch by not being able to extend the debt ceiling. The committee’s failure sends another dangerous message to the financial markets that the United States is not yet serious about addressing its addiction to borrowed money.

The people we are sending to Washington are becoming incapable of acting like adults. They can’t make a difficult decision and won’t risk alienating the special interests on whom they depend for their jobs and their power.

We can only end this editorial with the words we used a week ago in a futile call for the supercommittee to reach a necessary compromise.

This is no way to run a nation, a least not if it expects to remain a great nation.