Surprise, surprise — the so-called Super Committee isn’t very super.
It appears that the august micro-body of solons will fail to come to an agreement to reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, not in any combination of new revenue or spending “cuts” by today’s effective deadline.
On the bright side, given the nature of the likeliest possible agreement this committee would conceive, its failure sounds like the best possible result.
We’re now over $15 trillion in debt, running a deficit of $1.5 trillion this year alone. Still, the Super Committee couldn’t sop up even 80 percent of the red ink they’re spilling just this year. Not even spread out over the decade.
It gets worse. “I think we need to be honest about it,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul pointed out yesterday on CNN. “Spending is still rising under any of these plans. We’re only cutting proposed increases in spending.”
“The curve of spending in our country is going up at about 7.5 percent a year,” Sen. Paul went on to explain. “If you were to freeze spending for ten years, no cuts … they would call that a $9 trillion cut.”
So, as we face a debt crisis, the Super Committee couldn’t even manage to lessen their planned massive increases in spending.
Or talk straight with the American people.
Why? Perhaps because official Washington knows that spending is the real source of their power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.