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Aides: 'Super Committee' likely to announce failure to reach debt deal By Lisa Desjardins and Kate Bolduan, CNN Washington (CNN) -- Members of the "super committee" charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in budget cuts are focused on how to announce failure to reach a deal, Democratic and Republican aides confirmed to CNN Sunday. While aides said no final decision had been made, they acknowledged that -- barring an unforeseen development -- an announcement of no deal is the most likely scenario. Talks on trying to reach a deficit reduction agreement are essentially over and discussions are focused on...

Economists are warning of dire consequences if US politicians fail to make progress this weekend in tense talks aimed at reducing America's massive deficit ahead of a Wednesday deadline. The bi-partisan congressional super-committee is charged with drawing up plans for a $1.2tn reduction in the nation's deficit by the middle of next week. Failure to do so will trigger an automatic "sequester" that will make cuts of that size to defence and social welfare programmes starting in 2013. But the two sides seem far from finding a solution after clashing over tax revenues.

With a little over a week left to reach a deal, members of the congressional deficit reduction panel are looking for an escape hatch that would let them strike an accord on revenue levels but delay until next year tough decisions about exactly how to raise taxes. Under this approach, the panel would decide on the amount of new revenue to be raised but would leave it to the tax-writing committees of Congress to fill in details next year, well beyond the Nov. 23 deadline for the panel itself to reach an agreement. That would put off painful political decisions...

So says Rand Paul to Hannity. Rich Lowry’s hearing the same thing: Democrats last night rejected a framework for compromise that would have included significant new revenues. They had sounded amenable to the possible deal, but their position suddenly hardened after going back to their caucus. It is almost surely an indication that they want to do everything they can to validate President Obama’s line of attack on a “do nothing” Congress. Sen. Pat Toomey had worked out a framework that he considered pro-growth and a reasonable first step toward fiscal restraint, while making a major concession to Democrats on...

A remarkable thing has happened on the way to the supercommittee deadline: Republicans are beating the “we-want-more-revenue” drum. No, congressional Republicans haven’t taken up the mantle of tax increases, but as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction lurches toward its Nov. 23 deadline to cut $1.2 trillion from the nation’s deficit, GOP lawmakers are talking a lot about how to raise revenue and still stick to their no-tax-increase pledge.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made clear on Thursday that when it comes to a deficit reduction deal, his position hasn’t changed: Tax increases are out, but new revenues could be in. The question of taxes and revenue has bedeviled congressional and administration negotiators for months, and they were at the center of the dispute between Boehner and President Obama when their talks for a possible “grand bargain” on the budget fell apart over the summer. As the clock ticks down on the deficit supercommittee to find at least $1.2 trillion in savings, the size and scope of new revenues...

Washington (CNN) -- Democrats on the debt-reduction super committee proposed a plan for slashing up to $3 trillion from the federal debt but Republicans swiftly and decisively rejected it because it relied heavily on tax increases, according to several congressional sources from both parties. One top Republican aide described the Democratic offer, made in a closed meeting Tuesday, as "outrageously absurd" and a "non-starter," and a sign the super committee may ultimately fail. But this is the first time in the months since the committee began its negotiations that any group on the panel has offered a specific plan.Democratic sources...

Democrats on the congressional supercommittee this week presented Republicans with a plan to cut the deficit that included billions of dollars in stimulus spending, aides told The Hill. In a private meeting of the deficit panel Tuesday, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, presented a proposal backed by a majority of Democrats on the panel that includes more than a trillion dollars in tax increases. The revenue would partially cover stimulus spending for the economy, aides said. More than 50 percent of the deficit reduction in the plan would come from tax increases, one source said....

Congressional leaders met this week with two of the most important people in Washington: the co-chairmen of the Joint Committee for Deficit Reduction. There was only one problem: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t even know the meeting was taking place. With work on the all-important super committee finally kicking into high gear, panel co-chairmen Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in the leadership suite of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Kyl is also member of the...

They’ve only met once, but Sen. Jon Kyl is already threatening to quit the deficit busting supercommittee if the panel pushes more defense cuts. “I’m off the committee” if there are deeper cuts to the military, Kyl warned at a forum sponsored by several conservative think tanks, including AEI, the Foreign Policy Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. ...Kyl and others are also deeply worried about the so-called “trigger” in the debt-limit law passed last month. If the supercommittee fails to reach between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, there will be automatic cuts in defense spending and Medicare....

Whatever you think of Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade America’s credit, their justification was fairly plain. Political gridlock has managed to scuttle several successive efforts to get a handle on the federal debt. And few, if anyone, is sanguine that the new “supercommittee” in Congress will have any better luck. But a closer look reveals that, despite the nation’s pessimism, there are several reasons to believe that the 12-member supercommittee may be able to implement a plan that sets the nation back on track. The setup has been rigged to force a deal. So, in an age where “shorting”...

Aug. 20, 2011, 2:50 p.m. EDT ‘Super committee’ Republican: Simplify taxes More spending ‘very bad idea,’ tea-party favorite Sen. Toomey says By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The 12-member “super committee” tasked with cutting the U.S. budget deficit has a “great opportunity” to simplify the tax code, Sen. Pat Toomey says. What it won’t do, if the Pennsylvania Republican gets his way, is spend any government money in an attempt to boost economic growth. Spending, the former Club for Growth president said in a phone interview with MarketWatch, is “an artificial way that the government tries to conjure up...

Who's been cozying up to the members of the new Congressional super committee? With the committee set to decide on a whopping $1.5 trillion in federal deficit reduction this fall, lobbyists and corporations are trying to figure out which industries are best connected to the 12 members of the new panel. You can bet that those connections will be pressed to the limit in coming months as companies and sectors scramble to ensure that federal spending they like and tax breaks they depend on aren't slated for elimination. As it looks at the new committee members, Wall Street may like...

Together We Can Beat the Deficit We did it in the 1990s and we can do it again today. By PATTY MURRAY, MAX BAUCUS AND JOHN KERRY Our country has long been a beacon of light in the world because the American people always come together when times are tough. Over the past few months, in debating the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, that light of common cause has appeared to flicker at times in our nation's capital. As appointees to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—12 members of Congress charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over...

We have thee branches of government at the Federal level of government. We have the Executive, Legislative and Judicial. But thanks to the debt ceiling debacle we now have a SUPER CONGRESS. When the real Congress can't get King Obama's agenda passed and the states are passing statutes left and right to insulate themselves against extra Constitutional authority by King Obama and his allies we now have a Super Congress. Lowly little Representatives, Senators and President by day, when an emergency arises they all go to their secret phone booths and transform into SUPER CONGRESS!!!!!!!!!!! The Super Congress has super...

President Barack Obama is eyeing a 2012 campaign modeled on President Harry Truman’s 1948 successful re-election campaign against Congress. First, however, the White House will send to Capitol Hill an assortment of ‘economy-boosting’ legislation in a package that may include a major overhaul of the tax code. “I’ll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit,” Obama told a friendly audience at a Decorah, Minnesota campaign-event on Monday. “My attitude is, get it done … [but] if they don’t get it done, then...

Some Democratic members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, have become the subject of criticism, but their appointments were only finalized Thursday. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, and Reps. James Clyburn of South Carolina and Xavier Becerra of California are already being targeted for circumstances that could compromise their abilities to negotiate. Becerra, for example, wasted no time before using his appointment as a fundraising tool for his own campaign.

Rep. Xavier Becerra — or, to be more precise, lobbyists working on his behalf — wasted no time Thursday capitalizing on the California congressman’s appointment to the congressional super committee. A little over two hours after Becerra was named to the powerful panel, Investment Company Institute’s Jim Hart sent out an email encouraging attendance for the trade group’s upcoming $1,500 per person fundraiser based on Becerra’s new found status as one of the elite 12. “We will host an event for Congressman Xavier Becerra, not only Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus but also who has just been named to...

WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Here is a look at some of the top donors to election campaigns for the 12 members of the U.S. Congress named to a deficit-fighting "super committee." Known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the panel is expected to be the most heavily lobbied body in Washington ahead of its Nov. 23 deadline for making recommendations on $1.5 trillion in additional budget savings. Unless specified, donations below combine members' campaign committees and leadership PACs (political action committees). Data is from www.opensecrets.org. SENATE DEMOCRATS Patty Murray of Washington state * Software giant Microsoft Corp...

The 12 lawmakers appointed to a new congressional supercommittee charged with tackling the nation's fiscal problems have received millions in contributions from special interests with a direct stake in potential cuts to federal programs, an Associated Press review of federal campaign data has found. The newly appointed members — six Democrats and six Republicans — have received more than $3 million total during the past five years in donations from political committees with ties to defense contractors, health care providers and labor unions. That money went to their re-election campaigns, according to AP's review. Supporters say the lawmakers were picked...