Supercommittee failure is symptomatic of Congress's doomed bargaining. Like a delusional addict, it has to want to change
The failure of the supercommittee (which didn't even exist long enough for people to settle on a canonical capitalisation scheme) is the kind of bad news where the sound of wringing of hands drowns out the information about what the failure actually means, and the reasons for it.
The easy answer – that the impasse stems from the inability of the parties to compromise – isn't wrong, but it does tend to cover up in generalities the specific actions (and actors). Over at Slate, Dave Weigel traces the roots of the committee's failure to decisions made over ten years ago. In 2001, Republicans gleefully passed the Bush tax cuts without listening to the (admittedly oblique) warning of Alan Greenspan:
"What if, for example, the forces driving the surge in tax revenues in recent years begin to dissipate or reverse in ways that we do not now foresee?"
What if, indeed.
The Democrats are not without fault, though honestly, I'm having trouble coming up with something specific beyond how they ceded so much ground to Republicans when Republican ideas were popular. The good news for them (and us!), now, is that Republican ideas aren't popular. Over the weekend, supercommittee member Senator Jon Kyl even tried to go all "Occupy" on David Gregory, boasting that Republicans had presented a plan wherein "the wealthiest Americans would pay more taxes than they do now."
You know a party is in trouble when it's quoting the signs being waved outside their supporters' meetings.
At this point, congressional Republicans' attempts to even look like they're trying to do something on deficit reduction remind me of my own attempts to curb bad behavior: institute some arbitrary-ish rules (no eating carbs after 5!), along with daunting (but self-imposed!) consequences for breaking my own rules (can't watch "Jersey Shore"!). The flaw in the scheme runs deeper than you'd think. Sure, it's easy for me (being the person who designed the whole setup) to then wiggle around the rules.
But the real root of the problem is that no system of punishment and reward can make me want to change my behavior. All I really want is the benefit that changing the behavior would bring.
People use the metaphor of legislators being "addicted" to spending (or tax cuts) pretty casually, but thanks to Newt Gingrich's invocation of the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous, I wonder if there's a more substantive comparison to be made between congressional malfeasance and compulsive behavior. The first of the Twelve Steps, after all, is to admit you're powerless over the action you want to stop, that there's no out-thinking yourself, no deals you can make, no amount of willpower you can muster.
One often has to hit bottom for this to sink in, and certainly Congress is looking at their bottom – even if they think it's a hole in the ground.