US 'Super-Committee' fails '... No Agreement

Barack Obama: ''At this point they [Republicans] simply won't budge''

A US congressional committee tasked with reducing the deficit by $1.2tn (£762bn) has failed to come to an agreement. The panel of six Republicans and six Democrats confirmed after the New York Stock Exchange had closed that its work had ended without a deal. The outcome means automatic cuts outlined in the bill that created the committee should take effect from 2013. The US national debt has just risen above $15tn.

The panel was set up in August, the result of a last-minute deal between the two sides in Congress to raise the debt ceiling and avert a default on US debt payments. "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," Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican Representative  Jeb Hensarling said in Monday's joint statement. "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," it added.

In a White House news conference later on Monday, President Barack Obama said it was Republicans' fault. "There's still too many Republicans in Congress that have refused to listen to the voices of reason and compromise," he said. President Obama said he would veto any attempt to reverse the automatic cuts to government spending. They are to be applied over the next 10 years, split between defence and domestic budgets. A few programmes are to be protected, including Social Security and Medicaid.

 America is not about to default on its debts, but we've just seen default of a sort - by Congress, on its responsibilities. Americans are already aghast at their elected representatives' inability to agree on how to heal the nation's finances. The spectacle of the super-committee's failure will only cause them to slump deeper in their seats.

Now, supposedly, the so-called sequestration cuts kick in. They start in 2013, more than a trillion dollars worth, half of which will come from the military budget, the rest distributed across the federal government. These cuts are a sort of fiendish Plan B. They were designed to come into effect only if the super-committee failed. Nobody really wants them. Some in Congress are already muttering about undoing them. President Obama says he will force them through.
So look for fierce clashes over the future of those tax cuts enacted by President George W Bush. Look for ferocious lobbying by the defence industry. Look for howls of anger at cuts in federal education funding, and medical and welfare benefits for the elderly and poor. And much, much more. The deficit battle has been joined, and on this terrain will the presidential election be fought.

 As the reductions triggered by Monday's announcement are not set to take effect until January 2013, lawmakers have the time to change or repeal the automatic cuts. Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are already working on legislation that would undo the automatic defence reduction, replacing it with cuts across the federal government. The panel's work was contentious from the beginning, with Senator Murray's request that the negotiations should not be leaked to the press largely ignored. Congressional approval ratings in recent polls have been at historic lows