Waiting for Failure

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
NYT

As I read the background story on the collapse of the “super committee” talks in the Times today, I felt depressed. It’s not like I wasn’t prepared for this: The committee’s membership and rules seemed certain to produce a stalemate.

But it was still disheartening to read how the Republicans organized themselves to produce a series of ever-smaller cuts to the deficit (interesting considering they claim to be the big deficit hawks on campus) and ever-smaller tax increases. By the time things finally unraveled on Sunday, the GOP was down to about $643 billion in deficit reduction (compared to the Democrats’ initial offer of about $3 trillion over 10 years) and offered less than $3 billion in new revenue.

Now that’s bold thinking – assuming your goal is to keep the economy as weak as possible until Election Day 2012.

Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who co-chaired the committee with Senator Patty Murray of Washington, unwittingly underscored how tragically dysfunctional Washington is these days when he said that prior to the committee’s meetings he had no idea who Ms. Murray was. She’s only been a senator since 1992.

(More here.)