Super committee ends talks without deal

Late Monday afternoon, the co-chairmen of the congressional super committee announced that their talks had ended in stalemate. In a joint statement, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said, "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."

Associated Press/USA Today:  Co-Chairs Say Debt Panel Has Failed To Reach Deal
The bipartisan leadership of a special congressional committee -; assigned the task of slashing more than $1 trillion dollars from the U.S. deficit -; announced Monday that the panel failed, unable to bridge bitter ideological differences separating Republicans and Democrats in the run-up to presidential and legislative elections next year (11/21).

New York Times:  Panel Fails to Reach Deal On Plan For Deficit Reduction
After one last bout of fitful but futile talks, Congressional negotiators conceded the obvious: that the joint Congressional committee charged with drafting a deficit reduction package would miss its deadline this week. But they did not quite give up the ghost of a chance that a solution might be found later (Steinhauer, Pear and Cooper, 11/21).

Los Angeles Times: Super Committee Fails To Agree On Deficit-Reduction Plan
But Republicans and Democrats were unable to compromise on the tax and spending issues that have divided Congress all year, punting the debate to next year's presidential and congressional campaigns. Republicans refused to substantially raise taxes and wanted to cut federal deficits largely by reducing spending on Medicare and other domestic programs. Democrats wanted a more equal balance of new taxes and spending cuts -- a level of taxation the GOP could not accept  (Mascaro, 11/21).

CNN: 'Super Committee' Fails To Reach Agreement
They acknowledgment of failure came after last-minute talks Monday on what one participant billed as a "new idea" in an effort to salvage agreement on a deficit reduction deal. A previously unscheduled afternoon meeting involving some committee members from both parties broke up shortly before 2:30 p.m. Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana told reporters the topic was a "new idea," but offered no further details (Bolduan and Walsh, 11/21).

Washington Post:  Supercommittee Announces Failure In Effort To Tame Debt
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) floated a last-minute tax plan Monday and met in his office with a fellow Democrat on the panel, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), along with Republican senators Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and Rob Portman (Ohio). There was no breakthrough, however, and the supercommittee's nearly three months of work ended quietly (Kane and Montgomery, 11/21).

Politico: Supercommittee Fails To Reach A Deal
After a frantic day of last-ditch negotiations, the 12-member supercommittee folded late Monday, failing to cut $1.2 trillion from federal spending and setting into motion harsh across-the-board cuts. ... While the panel's failure comes as no surprise at this point, the terse words sent out from Murray and Hensarling added just another layer of gloom for an already pessimistic Capitol (Kim and Sherman, 11/21).

National Journal:  Super Committee Fails To Reach Deficit Agreement
The committee, in the end, could not resolve that Republicans would not go as far as Democrats wanted on allowing more revenue raisers, and Democrats did not want to move on entitlement reforms. Intense messaging by both political parties on which was more to blame is surely to spill out for days, if not months (House, 11/21).

Kaiser Health News has a collection of stories from earlier in the day about the fizzures in the super committee: Super Committee Failure Looms.