With (scant) apologies to Tom Lehrer

[rhu]

[The the tune of the Gilbert and Sullivan verse from "Clementine"]

So the supercommittee's
A group that's not witty.
A blooper. Dow's skitty and shy.

Now, sequestering budget's
a festering kludge, it's
a mess, sir, in dudgeon say I!

Committee gets snitty,
Quotidian. Pity.
And Mitt, he goes on Fox TV.

When he says "Blame Obama"
This sham melodrama
Brings shame to the whole GOP.

(Yes! Yes! Yes!)

For I will pay,
And you will pay,
Endebted is the USA
Yes you are screwed
And screwed am I,
Inflation for eternit-y!

(See what I mean?)

Comments

[sethg]

The GOP is beyond shame at this point.

In the absence of any kind of bipartisan deal, we will lose all the Bush tax cuts, including the tax cuts for the “middle class”¹, and the supercommittee deal provides for automatic reductions in defense spending. As a Democrat with both a bleeding heart and green eyeshades, I don’t see this as a terrible outcome.

¹By 2012 I expect Democratic strategists to be defining the “middle class” to include just about everyone that their clients hope to hit up for donations. Unfortunately, under this definition, a pledge not to raise taxes on “the middle class” is hard to reconcile with a commitment to balance the budget in the long term.

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

we will lose all the Bush tax cuts, ... and the supercommittee deal provides for automatic reductions in defense spending.

Unfortunately, that's not how it's gonna work. Those cuts an'etc. aren't slated to take effect until January 2013, and you know there's gonna be some last-minute a__-pull excuse for not implementing them. Especially since there's gonna be an election between now and then, and a whole new bunch of congressfolk will be in office.

Same old, same old. If they'd been serious about giving the supercommittee arrangement teeth, they should've had the sequesters kick in next Tuesday.

[sethg]

But Congress can’t simply “not implement” the tax hikes; they need to take a positive action with a bill that passes the House, doesn’t get filibustered in the Senate, passes the Senate, and gets signed by the President. The number of veto points in the American political system gives a substantial weight to the status quo (a fact which has stymied progressive legislators many times in the past), and the supercommittee bill established a new status quo.