Super committee ends work without a deal; Automatic cuts take effect in 2013

The divide between Republicans and Democrats proved too deep for the committee to find compromise.

The Washington Post: Supercommittee Announces Failure In Effort To Tame Debt
A special congressional committee created to try to curb the national debt abandoned its work and conceded failure Monday. ... Although Republicans offered to raise taxes by $300 billion over the next decade, they insisted on conditions that all but guaranteed that the wealthy would not be hit hard. And Democrats refused to agree to deep cuts in spending on health care for the poor and the elderly unless the rich were forced to make greater sacrifices (Montgomery and Kane, 11/21).

The New York Times: Panel Fails To Reach Deal On Plan For Deficit Reduction
The president noted pointedly after the talks failed that he had sent Congress his proposal to trim the deficit. "It's a plan that would reduce the deficit by an additional $3 trillion, by cutting spending, slowing the growth of Medicare and Medicaid and asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share." Republicans, he said, "simply will not budge" from their refusal to consider tax increases on the wealthy. "That refusal continues to be the main stumbling block that has prevented Congress from reaching an agreement to reduce our deficit" (Steinhauer, Cooper and Pear, 11/21).

The New York Times: For Deficit Panel, Failure Cuts Two Ways
By law, the panel's failure triggers new caps on spending, cutting $1.2 trillion from the military, education, health care and other priorities over 10 years beginning next fall. The combined impact of higher tax rates and less spending would reverse the growth of annual deficits beginning in 2013, reducing by more than half the current $1.3 trillion gap between annual revenue and spending (Appelbaum and Lowrey, 11/21).

Los Angeles Times: Super Committee Fails To Agree On Deficit-Reduction Plan
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).

The Wall Street Journal: Deficit Panel Folds Its Tent
Congress's special deficit-cutting committee bowed to reality Monday and called it quits, with both sides having concluded it was easier to swallow failure than any of the possible compromise deals offered. Because the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction couldn't come to an agreement, $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts are on track to begin in 2013. ... That clears the way for a yearlong legislative battle over whether to block those cuts or to replace them with another broad deficit-reduction plan (Hook and Bendavid, 11/22).

Politico: Supercommitee's Failure: Obama Blames GOP
Blaming Republicans for the supercommittee's failure to craft a debt-cutting plan, President Barack Obama on Monday warned that he won't allow Congress to wriggle out of the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts it agreed to make if the 12-member panel failed to reach agreement (Gerstein, 11/21).

Kaiser Health News: Health On The Hill: Why The Super Committee Struck Out
Kaiser Health News staff writer Mary Agnes Carey talks to Politico Pro reporter Matt DoBias about what led to the super committee's failure to cut a deal and discuss what it means for hopes of a permanent "doc fix."