Congress advises supercommittee to be cautious

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Congress flooded its supercommittee with a jumble of advice Thursday about taming the government’s out-of-control debt, with top agriculture lawmakers readying a bipartisan plan to pare food and farm aid while others urged an aggressive hunt for savings coupled with warnings against cutting cherished programs.

Most of the suggestions came from Democrats on 16 Republican-run House committees who sent letters to the special debt-cutting panel. Generally, their advice was to create jobs, raise revenue and avoid damaging cuts to public works, health care and other programs they said are crucial to an economic recovery.

House Democrats are “firmly committed to a deficit reduction plan that is big, bold and balanced,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in her own letter to the supercommittee. She said significant revenues must be part of the recipe and added, “Creating jobs is the most effective way to reduce the deficit.”

In an atypical show of unity, Democrats and Republicans who lead the House and Senate Agriculture committees planned to propose $23 billion in 10-year savings, said Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Senate Agriculture panel’s top Republican.

The savings likely would come in part from trimming food stamps and other nutrition programs by $4 billion, said another lawmaker who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal still-private details. In addition, direct subsidies to farmers, which are paid regardless of crop prices or production, would be eliminated.

With Congress due to consider a five-year farm bill next year, the proposal is aimed at heading off potentially deeper reductions.

Generally, Republicans have said the supercommittee should focus more directly on shrinking the debt than on creating jobs. But with the relentlessly high unemployment rate a top national concern, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., acknowledged this week that the panel likely will consider some ideas for creating jobs.