Kicking The Can Down The Road

 

They didn’t fail – they succeeded in doing nothing

Last Updated: 9:24 AM, November 22, 2011

Posted: 12:45 AM, November 22, 2011

www.mypost.com

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By John Podhoretz

 

The “supercommittee” has failed, or so we’re told. This group of six Democrats and six Republicans from the House and Senate couldn’t come up with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and tax hikes to circumvent automatic draconian cuts to federal spending (to national defense in particular).

 

Now those cuts will occur. Or maybe they won’t, since none of this will take effect until the start of 2013. But it’s just awful anyway — a sign of incredible dysfunction in Washington. Our system is broken!

 

Oh, no, it isn’t. The supercommittee wasn’t a failure. It was a success, despite what everybody has said, is saying and will continue to say.

 

It was created to kick the can down the road. The only thing that mattered was that it come into existence, and it did. Its invention made increases in the debt ceiling possible through the end of President Obama’s term.

 

Oh, the supercommittee’s putative purpose was to find massive spending cuts and tax hikes acceptable to both Democrats and Republicans. Then, after achieving this supernatural goal, it was to place these historic changes before Congress, the president and the American people and solve America’s spiraling debt problem at no political cost to anyone.

 

That scenario was a transparent absurdity. Indeed, it was so absurd that committee members couldn’t even go through the motions of pretending to fulfill it. Politico’s Mike Allen informs us that the supercommittee never actually met during the month of November.

 

Let me repeat that: As the deadline of Thanksgiving rapidly approached, the supercommittee members couldn’t be bothered to sit in the same room together.

 

This just proves that it was there just to get us to Thanksgiving. Thursday is Thanksgiving. The supercommittee’s work is done.

 

The lament that the supercommittee was unable to make a deal is ridiculous — because the supercommittee itself was the deal.

 

Going forward, the 12 members will find themselves under somewhat unpleasant assault for not having saved America from itself. At the same time, some of them will be showered with praise and increased campaign contributions for having refused to sell out their own camp’s principles.

 

And what has resulted from kicking the can down the road?

 

First of all, the debt ceiling was raised, which ended the drama over whether the debt ceiling would be raised.

 

The notion of staging a revolt against runaway government spending by challenging a debt-ceiling hike was the dumbest to emerge from the right since the confrontation that led to the 1995 government shutdown. It won’t be tried again, thank God.

 

Second, the sense of imminent doom omnipresent during the last two hysterical weeks of July, as the debt-ceiling deadline approached, has dissipated.

 

Third, the great fear raised by the possibility of a failure to increase the debt ceiling was that the nation would find its AAA bond rating downgraded. Then the debt ceiling was raised. And, even so, Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s bond rating.

 

So the worst happened — and we all woke up the next morning to find . . . nothing had changed.

 

Why? Well, it turned out that when it came to government dysfunction, extreme indebtedness and imminent economic doom, the United States was in mint condition compared to Europe.

 

Fourth, the Republican presidential campaign began to dominate the political news, casting everyone’s mind forward to November 2012. The central dispute between the camps of the supercommittee — the Republicans wanted no tax increases to stimulate economic growth and entitlement cuts to shrink the size of government, while Democrats wanted tax hikes on the wealthy — will certainly be the central debate of the upcoming national election.

 

That debate is not something 12 members of Congress can resolve, even if they lock themselves in a small room for months on end. It is a matter for the American people to resolve. And resolve it they will. Next year.

 

Meanwhile, the automatic spending cuts will go through. Unless they’re reversed. Later on. Through some other act of Kabuki theater. Because Kabuki theater is, in large measure, what politics is all about.