When ‘failure’ is relative

[ProSense]

When ‘failure’ is relative

By Steve Benen

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Atrios made a wise observation yesterday.

So there’s this bipartisan group of elected officials known as “Congress” that passed $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions into law. They also designated a random group of wankers to come up with some alternative $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions as a substitute. They didn’t come up with a substitute. So we have the original path to deficit reduction as opposed to the potential substitute.

Why the press has mostly taken the position that some unspecified substitute would be better, or that cuts are implicitly good…

Quite right. In fact, we can go a little further still.

When the debt-ceiling agreement was reached in August, the parties accepted $900 billion in cuts on top of the additional $1.2 trillion in savings, for a total of $2.1 trillion in debt reduction over the next decade.

The super-committee was told it could explore an alternative debt-reduction package, and perhaps work on an agreement that would reduce the debt even more, but the panel’s failure doesn’t change the underlying reality: Congress still approved $2.1 trillion in debt reduction over the next decade.

more

Fact Sheet: Reducing the Deficit, Raising the Debt Limit and Avoiding Default (PDF)

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• If the Committee Fails to Report Legislation That Achieves $1.2 Trillion in Deficit Reduction, or Congress Fails to Enact the Committee’s Recommendations, Sequestration is Triggered. If the Joint Committee fails to come to a majority agreement on recommendations that achieve at least $1.2 trillion, or Congress fails to enact recommendations that produce at least that amount, sequestration is triggered, forcing across-the-board spending cuts. The sequestration will be similar to the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings trigger and, with interest savings, will make up the differential between the deficit reduction achieved by the joint committee and $1.2 trillion.
  
  
• Sequestration Will Use Balanced Approach to Spending Cuts.
  
  
  • 50% of Sequestration Will Come From Defense. If across-the-board cuts are triggered, 50% will come from defense spending (Function 050), with the remaining 50% coming from non-defense spending. The spending cuts would apply to FYs 2013-2021, and apply to both discretionary and mandatory spending programs with important exemptions (below). The amount of the defense spending cuts each year is estimated to be over $50 billion if sequestration is triggered.
    
    
  • Social Security, Medicaid, Veterans Benefits, and Other Essential Benefits Are Exempt From Cuts. If across-the-board cuts are triggered, the following will be exempt: Social Security, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits and pensions, payments to federal retirement funds, civilian and military retirement, and the child nutrition, and Supplement Security Income, among others.
    
    
  • Medicare Savings Are Capped at 2% and Are Limited to Providers Only – No Benefit Cuts. If across-the-board cuts are triggered, any cut to Medicare would be limited to no greater than 2% of the program’s cost. Any such cut would come from payments to providers and insurance plans. There will be NO Medicare benefit cuts or increases in seniors’ costs.

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Krugman: Failure Is Good

[bhikkhu]

1. I agree with Krugman

...and I know it doesn't play well here, but this is part of why I considered the debt-ceiling deal package to be a good one. Given our utter failure in 2010 to stop a GOP "mandate", the president has still been able to negotiate them into a little corner where they give up the majority of their priorities.

[ProSense]

3. Yes,

in fact, the debt is addressed regardless of the outcome.

[Raine1967]

2. From the Plumline:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/no-both-sides-arent-equally-to-blame-for-supercommittee-failure/2011/11/21/gIQAj31ehN_blog.

No, `both sides’ aren’t equally to blame for supercommittee failure

Any news outlet that doesn’t convey this basic fact to readers and viewers with total clarity is obscuring, rather than illuminating, what actually happened here.

....snip....

Let’s allow that the GOP offer was a concession, in the sense that the original Republican position was that any and all revenues of any kind would be an automatic nonstarter. And let’s compare it with the concessions Democrats proposed to make. Both of the Dem offers were roughly split evenly between tax increases and spending cuts. In other words, both Dem offers involved both sides making concessions of roughly the same size.

This is the primary difference in a nutshell: The Dem offer involved both sides making roughly equivalent concessions; the GOP offer didn’t. The main GOP concession — the additional revenues — would have come in exchange for Dems giving ground on two major fronts: On cuts to entitlements, and on making the Bush tax cuts permanent.