The Super-Duper Committee

When the going gets tough, the pseudo-tough form a committee.  When the “going” is decision making and gets super-tough, when the outcomes are critical and any solution-set acutely painful, the pseudo-tough form a super-committee.  If kicking-the-can-down-the-road were an Olympic event, Congress would sweep the Gold, Silver & Bronze.

In this latest episode, the Debt Ceiling Crisis—artificially created but a very real monkey wrench in the gears of governance—is the container punted into the night (with enough hang time to allow for an August vacation of course).  A super-committee is being assembled underneath the falling can signaling for a fair catch.  No return is in the offing, and a yellow flag for “blocking from behind” has already been thrown.

Taken to the brink, we probably could have done worse than punt and go to the refrigerator during the change-of-possession commercial break.  When we return, the munchies on the coffee table will include: a spanking new, super-duper, Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction; an immediate ceiling increase of $0.4T and no immediate tax increases; a guaranteed vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, and an almost certain vote in 5 months on another $0.5T raise in debt ceiling with possibly another $1.5T roof-raiser depending on the super-duper committee recommendations.  (The idea is that super-committee comes up with a $1.5T deficit reduction over ten years which can then be matched by similar deficit ceiling increase.  Get it?... Uh, maybe.)

Historically, most super-duper committees have been outright failures and the light of hope for this one, though not stone cold out, is pretty dim.  I see two reasons for this.

First, most super-committees, which to be fair are created by executive order, have no statutory mandate for even serious consideration much less execution of recommendations (which typically are not generated in executable legislative format anyway).  At best, recommendations are cherry-picked, then doled out to congressional committee to return in some barely recognizable form.  At worst, recommendations find a cozy niche in (or behind) some filing cabinet.

This venture, created by a congressional act, does have some statutory teeth and thus a source of heat at least.  Heat is a necessary but not guaranteed sufficient condition to shed light.  The committee's recommendations do have a drop dead publishing date in November and must be voted on by Dec. 23 (President Obama can veto the legislation). Better still, the legislative-ready recommendations cannot be amended and passing requires a simple majority—no filibusters or other parliamentary hi-jinks are allowed. And there are specified consequences for not coming to agreement, which is one of those good news/bad news things.

The only other committee-commission-panel I can recall in recent history with that type of authority was the (military) Base Closing & Realignment Commission. BRAC’s conclusions were to be automatically executed unless Congress specifically disapproved an item.  They didn’t and by most accounts BRAC actually had a successful mission life.

The second failure mode, historically, is genetic.  Special committees spawned by partisan intransience in the first place as most are, have little chance of inheriting any mediating DNA from their procreators.  This group is genetically doomed: four of the members—two Republicans and two Democrats—also served on the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Panel but voted against the plan.  Super co-chair Hensarling and fellow (R) congressman Camp turned thumbs down in the DRP because it included tax hikes; Dem’s Baucus & Beccera likewise rejected the DRP package because of its proposed changes to Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security.  Given these two issues are the only ones of sufficient substance to make real progress; the outlook is bleak for any meaningful result.  

Couple this genetic defect (a committee populated to represent party leadership interests in proxy in order to gather credit & blame ammo for the 2012 elections) with the built in default statute (automatic across the board spending cuts of up to $1.2 trillion should the special committee deadlock or should Congress reject the committee's recommendations) and a probable scenario emerges.  The super-committee will nibble around the edges of the discretionary spending envelope while stalemating over the big-ticket items of tax reform and entitlement spending.  They will cover some fraction of the $1.5 T, 10-year deficit reduction mandate and leave the rest to the default mechanism while the spin-meisters assign blame. But “caps & triggers” are ignored all the time by congresses by including a “not withstanding any existing provision of law” reset in new legislation.  Reneging on this deal is not out of the question.

Actually, the probable scenario is even worse that that.  This is after all, a deficit reduction effort and we should think about both words.  Unless deficits are reduced to zero (not a charge for this committee) the debt will continue to grow (and ceilings will need to be raised).  Secondly, the “baseline” from which reduction is to be calculated is yet to be defined by this august group. 

The baseline candidates in play are bracketed by hypothetical “current law” and the “current practice” scenarios.  The former would be more effective IMO. It assumes congress does nothing over the next 10 years (allows the Bush Tax cuts to expire, adheres to statutory Medicare caps, etc.) and reduces deficits from those projected levels.  The current practice scenario calculates “reduction” from the exacerbated conditions our dysfunctional public servants continue to execute and a dysfunctional electorate continues to demand.

An appropriate parable might be that our eating habits have resulted in a 45 pound weight gain over the last 10 months and we’ve resolved to “loose” 15 lbs over the next ten.  We could calculate that metric prom our present weight or say that continuing “current practice,” we would gain another 45, so only gaining 30 would satisfy our resolution to lose 15.   Which calculus do you envision?

 

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