File this under "News that Surprised Very Few People:" Turns out that Joint Deficit Reduction Committee, aka the "Super Committee," wasn't so super after all, and officially announcing today that they had failed to reach a deal.
RT @KatiePavlich: pretty sure the new word is for #fail is going to be #super
Michelle Malkin
michellemalkin
Michelle Malkinmichellemalkin
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| Dramatic Chipmunk is shocked that Obama blames the GOP. |
I'm waiting for someone to make a mashup YouTube video with Obama press conferences and a toddler having a temper tantrum. Or maybe a remix of "Blame Canada!" from the South Park movie as "Blame Republicans!" Seriously, feel free to take these ideas, they're beyond my tech abilities, but just give me credit! (And a linkback, of course.)
Anyway, here's some reactions to the Super Committee Super Fail today from Marco Rubio, Adam Hasner, Newt Gingrich, and around the conservative blogosphere:
Press Release from Senator Marco Rubio:
Florida Senate candidate Adam Hasner published an op-ed at National Review:SENATOR RUBIO COMMENTS ON SUPER COMMITTEE’S FAILURE
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio issued the following statement regarding today’s announcement that the congressional “Super Committee” failed to produce a plan to tackle the national debt: “The Super Committee was a flawed idea from the start and, while I give credit to several of its members for making a good faith effort, its fate was sealed by the President’s failure to put forward a plan to cut spending and his unbreakable obsession with raising taxes on job creators. “The consequences of this Washington-style leadership failure are not only a missed opportunity to reign in our debt, but also a step toward devastating cuts to our national security efforts. In sum, this threatens to leave us with a diminished economy, a less secure future and on track for our own Greece and Italy-like day of reckoning. “We need to cut spending and save entitlements without enacting job-killing tax hikes that would hurt our economy. Until the American people rid Washington of politicians who are addicted to spending and intolerant of fundamental spending reforms, our job creators won’t have the confidence to go out and do what they do best, and our people will continue to suffer.”
National Review | Adam Hasner | The Supercommittee's Emblematic Failure
After months of negotiations it is now clear that the so-called supercommittee has failed. No one outside of Washington is surprised by this fact. The supercommittee was born out of failure: a failure to lead, a failure to act, and a fundamental failure by politicians more interested in protecting their D.C. niche than in doing what is right.
The supercommittee has come to represent everything that is broken with Washington. I wouldn’t be shocked to see the term become shorthand for the kind of D.C.-centric thinking that has brought us to this point.
The easiest way to explain what is wrong with Washington would be to tell the story of the supercommittee. After years of fiscal irresponsibility by both major parties and many presidents — including the current occupant of the White House, whose reckless multi-trillion-dollar spending spree has endangered our national security — the best they could do was form another committee. Instead of taking the steps necessary to cut spending and fix our tax code, both parties kicked the can down the road and delayed the inevitable.
The supercommittee is a microcosm of Washington. Rather than do the work they were elected to do, Congress punted and left the responsibility in the hands of twelve of their colleagues, while the rest of them sat and waited. Thanks to this, we are now facing either $600 billion in cuts to defense or a minimum $300 billion tax hike.
Conventional wisdom inside the Beltway believed that a grand bargain could be reached if the members were removed from the standard political process. They were wrong. Never underestimate the ability of twelve members of Congress to get absolutely nothing accomplished, outside of raising taxes and growing the government.
But any deal that would have raised taxes or cut defense spending was not a good deal for America. Over the course of the last several decades, there has been entirely too much dealmaking. It is one of the main reasons why America finds itself $15 trillion in debt with a 9 percent unemployment rate.
A dysfunctional process will never produce a positive result. Whether we are talking about the supercommittee or eliminating presidential cufflinks, politicians spend far too much time focusing on sideshows and political posturing rather than addressing the real issues. And the issues we face are deadly serious. If we don’t get spending under control, fix our entitlement programs, and get our economy growing, $15 trillion in debt is quickly going to become $20 trillion and then $30 trillion.
But with the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as the supercommittee co-chair, it was clear from the start we were never going to see any serious spending-reform proposals from the Democrats.
The actions we need to take are not state secrets. We should close tax loopholes and eliminate special-interest deductions, and do so in the context of lowering overall tax rates to reduce compliance costs and make America more competitive. Our main goal has to be economic growth. This will not happen until we cut spending and remove the bureaucratic barriers preventing businesses from expanding and hiring new employees.
There has never been a time in American history when the need for overhauling our tax code and making dramatic spending cuts was more obvious. Watching our national debt breach $15 trillion should have been a wakeup call to both Republicans and Democrats, but the failure of the supercommittee is just more proof that the process in Washington is broken.
The supercommittee was successful in one respect. It once again highlighted how Washington problems can’t be fixed by the same Washington insiders who helped create them in the first place. More than ever, we need leaders willing to make the tough decisions — decisions that may not be politically popular now but ones that are needed to save the country in the long-term.
Newt Gingrich's campaign sent out an email, along with a new web video:
When the "Super Committee" was established in the summer, Newt wasn't afraid to call it what it was: "a truly dumb idea." Today, Newt 2012 released a new web video, with clips from the August 11th presidential debate in Iowa, where Newt was the leading critic of the "Super Committee" and predicted its failure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hU0F7bt0wQ.
Transcript of Newt's quotes in the web video:
"I think this Super Committee is about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime."
"I used to run the House of Representatives, I have some general notion of these things. The idea that 523 senators and congressman are going to sit around for 4 months while 12 brilliant people -- mostly picked for political reasons -- are going to sit in some room and brilliantly come up with $1 trillion, or force us to choose between gutting our military and accepting a tax increase is irrational."
"They're going to walk in just before Thanksgiving and say 'Alright, we can shoot you in the head or cut off your right leg, which do you prefer?'"
"What they oughta do is scrap the committee right now, recognize it's a dumb idea, go back to regular legislative business, assign every subcommittee the task of finding savings, do it out in the open through regular legislative order, and get rid of this secret phony business."
Last week during a campaign swing through Iowa, the Washington Post noted: "Gingrich, more than any other candidate in the 2012 presidential race, has been talking about the supercommittee on the campaign trail and at debates." They went on to call his leadership against the Super Committee "an ideal set of circumstances for Gingrich, who has demonstrated a skilled grasp of policy minutiae in speeches and during debates, where he has excelled."
YouTube | ngingrich | Newt Was Right on the Super Committee
Reaction from around the blogosphere:
Michelle Malkin | Doomed by Design: The SuperFail Committee
RedState | Daniel Horowitz | The Anatomy of a Compromise from Hell
American Spectator | Can, Officially Kicked
The Other McCain | Sen. Schumer's Deed Shall Live in Infamy
Gateway Pundit | Super Committee Fails to Reach Agreement - Dems Rush to Blame GOP
Gateway Pundit | Divider in Chief...Obama Rushes to Blame GOP for Super Committee Failure
Townhall.com | Guy Benson | The Super Fail - Who's to Blame?
The Right Scoop | Confirmed: Super Committee Not So 'Super'
Ace of Spades | RIP Super Committee (8/1/11 - 11/21/11)
The Sundries Shack | Your Fiscal Fright of the Month
(Anyone else who wants to be listed here, send me your links and quotes.)
UPDATE: Adam Hasner had some additional comments after the Super Committee's failure was officially announced and President Obama gave his speech:
Adam Hasner on Facebook | "Another Campaign Speech..."
I just watched the President make another campaign speech from the White House.UPDATE II: Here's Representative Allen West's statement (hat tip: Crowley Political Report):
Despite what they call it, that's what it was: a campaign speech from a failed President who has wrecked America's economy and who has never offered a serious, substantive plan for entitlement reform, for reducing the deficit or for addressing the staggering debt with which he has saddled future generations. He has become a creature of Washington's failed political class, where both parties spend and spend without the slightest sense of responsibility or accountability. I'm sure you're as tired as I am of his endless excuses, phony class warfare and meaningless promises of spending cuts.
I didn't expect President Obama to show leadership during these debates. With the exception of his rabid advocacy for job-killing taxes, his expanding regulatory state and his green-energy fantasies, he doesn't really seem to fundamentally care about the direction of this country. President Obama avoids responsibility like the plague, and working for a meaningful budget solution isn't the kind of thing he shows interest in.
"The Super Committee was entrusted by the American people and by fellow Members of Congress to work together and come up with a solution to America's fiscal crisis by spending and balancing our budget and finding the means to cut 1.2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell confirms his commitment to see that spending cuts are still made:
The Members of the Super Committee that stepped up to the plate to complete this task promised their country they would put politics aside, and fulfill this important task. Yet, it is apparent to everyone that politics and partisanship is at the very core of this failure. Over the course of the past two months, including dozens of meetings and hearings, this Super Committee has not been able to agree on a single issue that can help move this country forward. I find it appalling that grown adults can not sit down at a table and find a way to negotiate something so important to the future of this nation.
President Barack Obama and his Administration are to blame for the anticipated failure of the Super Committee. He has stood by and done nothing to encourage bipartisanship among this committee. Instead, the President and this Administration would rather sit back and watch automatic cuts kick in that will be devastating to our military- ripping 600 billion dollars from Defense in 10 years. At a time when America's enemies are more emboldened than ever, our military needs to be supported, not shredded.
I am calling on President Obama to step up and be a leader and introduce legislation that will restore these automatic cuts to our military. We can not put our country in danger because of partisan antics. The American people are sick and tired of Washington, DC and there's good reason why. The failure of this Super Committee is an embarrassment to Congress and to the American people. I call upon Members of Congress to learn from this failure and realize that the true victims of these partisan antics and political games are the American people."
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Monday regarding the conclusion of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, and the guaranteed $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction that will take place despite the lack of an agreement:
“For those of us who hoped that this committee could make some of the tough decisions President Obama continues to avoid, the Democrats’ rejection of not one but two good-faith Republican proposals is deeply disappointing. The good news is that even without an agreement, $1.2 trillion will still be cut from the deficit. Now it falls on the President to ensure that the defense cuts he insisted upon do not undermine national security, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned.
“With this administration's out-of-control federal spending over the past three years, unemployment stuck at 9 percent, and a $15 trillion debt which grows daily, we felt it was necessary to create this extraordinary mechanism to reduce spending and make needed changes. Republicans viewed this committee as a golden opportunity to change the direction of the nation's fiscal trajectory and create a better environment for job growth. This was reflected in the seriousness of our appointees, and it was reflected in two Republican proposals that were designed to attract Democratic support.
“While Democrats insisted on a trillion-dollar tax hike and hundreds of billions of dollars in new stimulus spending, Republicans focused on pro-growth tax reform, protecting Medicare and Medicaid, and reducing Washington spending. Crucially, Republicans also proposed reducing government benefits to the wealthiest Americans. In our view, the best way to ensure that Washington doesn’t waste more taxpayer money is to give less of it away to those who don't need it--not to take more from taxpayers and hope for the best. If Democrats were more concerned about the deficit than in making government bigger, they would embrace proposals like this, too.
“In the end, an agreement proved impossible not because Republicans were unwilling to compromise, but because Democrats would not accept any proposal that did not expand the size and scope of government or punish job creators. This fact was underscored in the final hours of negotiations by their refusal to accept even a basic package of spending cuts and revenue that they had already agreed to during previous debt-limit negotiations—unless they were accompanied by a tax hike on the very people Americans are counting on to create the jobs we desperately need. Not even a proposal to get rid of a tax deduction for corporate jet owners, something Democrats had previously eyed as a major prize, was enough to move them off their puzzling insistence on taxing job creators in the middle of a jobs crisis.
“My main criteria for selecting members to this committee was to identify serious, constructive senators who are interested in achieving a result that helps to get our nation’s fiscal house in order. Sens. Kyl, Toomey and Portman lived up to that challenge. I would like to thank them, and the members and staff of the committee who devoted so much time and effort to finding a solution.
“While we'll still reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion, much more needs to be done. And we’ll continue our efforts to reduce the size of Washington, reform and protect the entitlement system for future generations, and create a better environment for job growth.”
UPDATE III: Here's Herman Cain's reaction:
“President Obama and his ultraliberal, anti-job creating comrades in the Democrat Party are apoplectic because Republicans are standing strong with the American people, refusing to hike their taxes during Obama’s Great Recession. Obama, again, is failing Americans, providing no leadership, and exacerbating our national debt to more than $15 trillion - over $48,000 for every American man, woman and child.
“We must immediately cut spending - for real, not the Obama way - and dismantle the barriers to growth. We must simplify the tax code, which my ‘9-9-9 Plan' does. According to former Reagan Treasury official Gary Robbins, of Fiscal Associates, 9-9-9 will expand our GDP by $2 trillion, create 6 million new jobs, increase business investment by one-third, and increase wages by 10 percent.
New leadership in Washington after Nov. 6, 2012 will unleash the American spirit of prosperity once again and toss Obama’s failed economic leadership into the history books.”
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