Super committee not so super

The so-called Super Committee that was supposed to come up with a bipartisan $1.5 trillion deficit reduction package announced on November 21 that they had failed to cut a deal.

No one expected them to fail until they did, and then it became perfectly obvious to everyone why they had to fail.

The assumption behind the Super Committee was that both Democrats and Republicans would be willing and able to put political differences aside in the interests of deficit reduction.

That was the biggest weakness of the whole concept, and the fundamental reason that the Super Committee would fail.

Both sides did, in fact, make concessions. Democrats put social spending cuts on the table. Republicans indicated they were willing to raise revenues.

The problem, however, is that deficit reduction will do nothing to help the sagging economy or put a single unemployed worker back to work. In fact, further cuts in government spending would certainly lead to reduced economic activity and increased unemployment.

In other words, it’s not hard to think of ways to cut the deficit, if that’s your only goal. But it’s impossible to cut the deficit and – at the same time – pull the country out of the Great Recession.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) put the problem very simply.

"The American people want an end to this gridlock with a balanced approach to reducing the debt that creates jobs, protects the Medicare guarantee, and brings shared sacrifice from the ultra wealthy and Big Oil," he said in a statement. "Voters have a chance to end this gridlock in November 2012."

You can’t create jobs and guarantee Medicare to all eligible seniors without spending money, and that means – in the short term – you really can’t cut the deficit until the country has recovered from the recession.

But once the country has recovered, it will be much easier to pay down the deficit because employed workers pay taxes, and they don’t need unemployment or other government-financed benefits.

Republicans, of course, still adhere to the old Reagan-style supply-side economics, and believe – against all the evidence – that economic austerity will revive the economy.

Too many Democrats believe this as well, and it was only because the Super Committee negotiations were being conducted against the background of the Occupy movement that the political issues of income inequality and economic justice came to the fore at all.

"After Occupy Wall Street, a month later, you were getting a lot more attention to income inequality, and that's a tremendous change in the politics of the country," said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose district includes Wall Street.

The failure of the Super Committee is not entirely good news, however.

Assuming that nothing else happens, $1.2 trillion of automatic across-the-board spending cuts will kick-in on October 1, 2012. These will include cuts to the defense department as well as social safety net programs.

The so-called Bush tax cuts will expire for everyone at the end of that year. In addition, the temporary cuts in the payroll tax and the extension of unemployment benefits may not be continued.

This result will undoubtedly be challenging not only to individual working families, but also to the entire national economy, as people pay more in taxes, have less to spend on goods and services, and – if they are still unemployed – see their benefits at risk.