So the Supercommittee, the one that was supposed to come up with one point something trillion dollars in cuts failed to reach an agreement. Basically the Republicans were of the opinion that they couldn’t add revenue through taxes because we’d be hampering business and trying to get blood from rocks and the Democrats were too tied to the many government programs that they didn’t want to see cut, and so now everything is going to get cut. Now, with the Supercommittee debunked a series of fairly harsh government spending cuts will go into effect next year, that is if congress lets it happen.
Which is something no one expects. Everyone is sure that the cuts will be stopped by Congress, while they’re flailing next year attempting to put together a budget and not challenge the next debt ceiling, two things they have had bad experiences with so far, they’re also going to stop all those major tax cuts. However, I’m not so sure about this. I can see some pretty clear alterior motives here.
On the side of the Democrats, the supercommittee failing might be a good thing for Obama. His approval ratings are so terrible right now that if the election was held right now he would lose to pretty much every Republican candidate, even Ron Paul. However, next year Congress will likely be sending him a Bill that cancels the mayor spending cuts that will occur. He will then veto that thing like a hot potato, and in one fell swoop win his approval rating back up, because right now the most important thing to people is that Congress needs to cut spending, whether those spending cuts are harsh or not. Obama will then have a very good chance of winning the election next year, meaning four more years of Executive control by the Democrats.
On the side of the Republicans, the failure of the supercommittee represents them getting exactly what they want. Huge spending cuts across the board. Now true, they aren’t thrilled about the cuts to the defense budget, but we all know that there is a huge amount of wasted money in the defense budget that can be cut. Next year, they’ll put forth a “stop the spending cuts” Bill, but it won’t be one that saves any of the social programs from being cut, it will basically be a plan to keep defense spending intact (Which I’m personally okay with since defense spending is one of the few things mentioned in the Constitution as actually being under the purview of the federal government).
So what will be interesting to see will be what Bill ends up on the President’s desk. The more hardline the Republicans are, the likelier things will turn out well for them, but if they go soft and offer to not cut spending on the social programs as part of the Bill then when it gets to the president he’ll be able to veto it without being labeled a “military killer”. Hopefully they’ll do better than the first George Bush did, he decided to be bi-partisan and it killed him because he raised taxes at the behest of the democrats. Should be interesting either way.
