The supercommittee?s failure has been described as a colossal embarrassment and just another emblem of a dysfunctional Congress that can?t get anything right.
So what are the members of the imploded committee doing in the aftermath?
Continue ReadingObama on committee failure
Promoting and spinning their work on the panel, of course ? showing that it?s perhaps only in Washington that abject failure can be quickly translated into a political advantage.
In recent days, the panel members have hit the hustings hard to work the blame game on something that ended up a disaster. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), co-chair of the committee, spoke Wednesday at an event hosted by center-left Brookings Institution, insisting that the ?sticking point? in the panel?s failure was the GOP?s refusal to offer up sufficient tax revenues. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) dropped by the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Monday, slamming President Barack Obama and talking up corporate tax reform. And Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) hasn?t been shy about highlighting his work: The title of his Tuesday address to conservatives at The Heritage Foundation was ?Life After the Super Committee: Where We Go From Here.?
Part of this is pure politics ? each side needs to make clear that they had great ideas and were the true compromisers so as to avoid shouldering too much blame for the ignoble end of the supercommittee. Some critics say the spin games are no surprise from politicians in Washington ? even in a time when congressional approval ratings stand at 9 percent.
?We all recognize that it?s going to be a very nice r?sum? piece that they served on it,? said former Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.). ?They aren?t going to walk away from the opportunity to talk about the work they did.?
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), himself no fan of the supercommittee, noted: ?So long as the media has an interest, you?re going to have a lot of politicians exploiting that.?
Freed from the shackles of secrecy that shrouded the panel?s work, its members seem to be doing more public spinning in one week than they did during the entire three months they served on the panel.
?I end this process having learned a tremendous amount, having become much more clear about what we need to do,? Murray said in her speech. ?And I don?t feel like I ended a process but really began a process to really show our country that we can step up when our challenges are tough.?
Portman even thinks there?s still a chance for real deficit reduction.
?While final resolution eluded us, the supercommittee?s work can benefit the cause of deficit reduction,? Portman told the AEI crowd. ?Through lengthy discussions, Republicans and Democrats alike gained a better understanding of each other?s viewpoints and frameworks.?
Toomey told POLITICO it?s healthy to dissect and discuss the supercommittee to keep its favored policy ideas alive.
?I think that we put a very, very constructive and sensible and viable proposal on the table, and I?m hoping that some parts of it, if not all of it, could still live to see another day,? he said. ?So I?m going to continue to make the case for why we ought to have tax reform on the individual and corporate codes [and] what that reform ought to look like.?
Murray also defended the supercommittee postmortem.
?I think the country needs to understand what the tripping point is in us coming to a fair and balanced solution,? she told POLITICO after her remarks Wednesday, which came in a speech centered on workforce training and development.
Republicans, in particular, may have one incentive to fight to shape the message. Results from public opinion polls examining the supercommittee have tended to lean against the GOP ? for instance, a Nov. 21 Quinnipiac University poll released four hours before the panel?s failure showed that 44 percent of voters would place more blame on congressional Republicans if the supercommittee deadlocked, while 38 percent would fault Obama and congressional Democrats.
In a Nov. 22 Gallup Poll, a majority of Americans blamed both parties for the failure. But of those who took sides, more were likely to blame Republicans rather than Democrats.
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