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View Full Version : Deficit committee unlikely to achieve anything remarkable



red states rule
08-08-2011, 04:03 AM
Is anyone surprised at this shocking revelation? Yes, "compromise" was the way to go folks!





House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), a top choice among Republicans for a deficit-cutting super-committee formed last week, on Sunday sought to tamp down expectations for the panel.

“I don’t think a grand bargain is going to come out of this,” Mr. Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. He said that any deal for more than the $1.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years that the committee is charged with finding would depend on whether Democrats were willing to agree to overhaul entitlement programs. “I don’t see any agreement from the other side getting anywhere close to doing that,” he said.
Congress created the special, bipartisan committee last week as part of the deficit-reduction package that paved the way for an increase in the federal debt ceiling. After Standard & Poor’s last week downgraded U.S. government debt (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903366504576491421339802788.html), citing a lessening of confidence in the political system to deal with deficits, the focus turned to the super committee and its ability to come up with a big deficit-cutting deal.

“People are overemphasizing what this committee is going to achieve,” Mr. Ryan said.
“I want to make sure people understand that I don’t think this is going to be a committee that is going to fix all our fiscal problems,” he said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), speaking on ABC’s “This Week,’’ said that “I do believe that committee can function and be successful in the limited goal we’ve given them.”
Mr. Ryan said that House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) hasn’t yet settled on which three House Republicans he will select for the 12-member panel. Asked if he would be on the panel, Mr. Ryan said that “I have not been told.”

Mr. Ryan was pessimistic on whether he could support President Barack Obama‘s plan, intended to revive the economy, to extend a payroll-tax holiday and unemployment insurance benefits, as well as set up a new “infrastructure bank” to finance construction projects.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/08/07/ryan-downplays-prospects-of-new-deficit-committee/