Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
(Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)After more than three months of negotiations, the congressional supercommittee announced Monday that it would not be able to reach a deal to reduce the deficit by the group's midnight deadline, citing "inability to bridge the committee's significant differences."
"After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline," said Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, the committee's two co-chairs, in a joint statement.
"Despite our inability to bridge the committee's significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation's fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve," the statement continued. "We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee's work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy."
Technically, the 12-person bipartisan group of lawmakers has until Wednesday at midnight to reach an agreement for reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion, as was tasked to them as part of Congress's August deal to raise the debt limit. But the members are legally required to make their plan public at least 48 hours before voting on it -- which means that the committee must come to a deal by Monday night.
At least seven committee members were involved in last-minute negotiations aimed at hammering out an agreement on Monday, and Sen. John Kerry purportedly floated an eleventh-hour proposal to the committee that would have included $1 trillion worth of tax increases.
But the issue of including tax revenues in the deficit reduction package remained a sticking point throughout the negotiations, and as of late afternoon on Monday, one Democratic aide said there had been "no sense of progress" despite the continued talks.
According to the debt limit deal, the committee's inability to compromise will result in $1.2 trillion worth of automatic cuts from areas like Medicare and national security in 2013. The so-called "sequestration" was designed to serve as an incentive for compromise, and both parties previously emphasized their commitment to avoiding those triggers.
Now, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pointing fingers for what is increasingly being seen as an exercise in partisan congressional dysfunction.
One Republican staffer pointed to Democrats' insistence on tax increases in any framework for a deal as the reason for the committee's failure, and contended that President Obama had designed a political strategy that doomed the committee to failure.
Democrats, meanwhile, took the GOP's refusal to raise taxes as a sign that the party is beholden to anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.
"As long as we have some Republican lawmakers who feel more enthralled with a pledge they took to a Republican lobbyist than they do to a pledge to the country to solve the problems, this is going to be hard to do," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wa., the Democratic co-chair of the supercommittee, said on CNN on Sunday, referencing the no-tax pledge run by Norquist's group, American for Tax Reform.
In a press briefing Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney deflected criticism that the Mr. Obama was insufficiently involved in the negotiations, noting that while the president put forth a blueprint for a deficit reduction plan, "there wasn't a seat at that table, that I'm aware of, for a member of the administration."
"This committee was established by an act of Congress. It was comprised of members of Congress. Instead of pointing fingers and playing the blame game, Congress should act, fulfill its responsibility," Carney pointed out.
While Carney conceded that the committee's failure to reach a deal will result in cuts to the defense budget that are "much deeper than we think are wise," he declined to suggest that the White House might reverse the so-called sequester.
Congress "needs to hold itself to account," he said. "And also should not then try to undo the consequences of their own failure, the consequences that they themselves passed into law."
Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~3/zA9BIef6nsc/
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