Supercommittee Leaders Admit Defeat

UPDATE: It's official: No deal.

Here's the joint statement from Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling (via TPM):

“Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve. We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee’s work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy.

“We are deeply disappointed that we have been unable to come to a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement, but as we approach the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, we want to express our appreciation to every member of this committee, each of whom came into the process committed to achieving a solution that has eluded many groups before us. Most importantly, we want to thank the American people for sharing thoughts and ideas and for providing support and good will as we worked to accomplish this difficult task.

“We would also like to thank our committee staff, in particular Staff Director Mark Prater and Deputy Staff Director Sarah Kuehl, as well as each committee member’s staff for the tremendous work they contributed to this effort. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Douglas Elmendorf and Mr. Thomas Barthold and their teams at the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation, respectively, for the technical support they provided to the committee and its members.”

UPDATE Monday, Nov. 21: The supercommittee's bipartisan co-chairs are expected to release a joint statement later Monday admitting what, by now, has become painfully obvious: The 12-person panel will miss Wednesday's deadline to have hammered out a deal.

(Note: While Nov. 23 was the deadline lawmakers set for the supercommittee, the panel would have likely needed to finish work on its proposal by the end of Monday in order for the Congressional Budget Office to score the proposal.)

Not only is the committee throwing in the towel early—a move that shows just how far apart the two sides were after months of work—lawmakers' staffs spent much of their final meeting focused not on a last-minute Hail Mary but instead trying to figure out how to break the news that their bosses had failed.

The Washington Post reports that "final staff-level discussions [focused] mostly on how the panel should publicly admit that lawmakers could not meet their mandate of shaving $1.2 trillion from the federal debt."

Sunday Nov. 20: Congressional lawmakers on the Debt Committee that has been meeting for months have reportedly failed to find any deal both Democrats and Republicans can agree with.

Each side has begun the blame game Sunday and has entered damage control. Faulting opponents’ rigidity for the committee’s pending collapse, The New York Times reports that pols are now falling back on a plan to “sequester” automatic spending cuts — $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

Democrats expressed anger that Republicans were unwilling to break a no new taxes pledge they signed, which was pushed by Grover Norquist’s antitax group Americans for Tax Reform.

Republicans fired back that the failure of the committee was instead on the shoulders of Democrats unwilling to cut programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The Obama administration in turn expressed frustration that Congress apparently was unable to negotiate a deal that offered concessions from both sides.

“Congress needs to do it’s job here,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement, according to the Times, “and make the kind of choices to live within its means that American families make every day.”

Without a budget deal this week, automatic budget cuts are supposed to kick in, starting in 2013, including deep cuts to everything from military spending to social programs. Congressional leaders are reportedly now focused on figuring out a way to tweak the automatic cuts.

The debt committee’s failure to reach a deal, and the bitterness it has apparently created between both sides will also most likely impact other legislation on the docket for the next few weeks.

From the Associated Press:

“The panel's failure also sets up a fight within a battle-weary, dysfunctional Congress over renewing a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, both of which are set to expire at the end of the year. Both proposals are part of President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs plan.

Extending the current 2 percentage point payroll tax cut isn't a popular idea with many Republicans, but allowing it to expire could harm the economy, economists say. So too would a cutoff of unemployment benefits averaging about $300 a week to millions of people who have been out of work for more than six months.”