If the supercommittee fails, the Bush/Obama tax cuts will expire on Jan 1, 2013. If you ask me, the failure of the supercommittee would be a good thing.

David - In my opinion, failure of the stuper committee is a shot in the head. If they fail they should all be removed from Office.

The mandatory cuts would be devistating. I think these politicians should be worried that the american people will form a super commitee that decides if they should keep their jobs. Their failure will be a shot in the head to our military and our country.

pat,

i just watched "meet the press. john kyle and john kerry were both on. incidently, the last time the supper committee met was nov. 1st. what does that tell you?

depending on whom you believe, john kyle says that the democrats refuse to cut anything without an increase in revenues (taxes on the rich). john kerry says that the democrats have made cuts to medicare twice without any revenues (taxes on the rich). if you watched the debt ceiling debacle at all, you know that this is true.

now the repubs/baggers are doing the same thing in the super committee that they did during the debt ceiling debacle, except instead of asking for an extension on the bush tax cuts, now they want to make them permanent. just as eric cantor walked out of meetings rather than discuss "revenues", the repubs/baggers have refused to put increased taxes on the table, thinking that they will take back the senate and the white house, so the american people can just go another year without doing a DAMN thing.

even republicans say that they know they will get the blame for the inability to reach a deal, because even the "do nothing" republicans can see that the democrats HAVE compromised, they have made cuts (917 billion dollars), and previously over 500 billion. the republicans constantly ask "what is President Obama's role, what has he done to move this process forward", when they insisted that President Obama NOT be involved at all in the process.

the republicans are so blinded by hatred for our president and for the democratic party, and so obsessed for taking back the white house and the senate that they don't want to do anything other than what they are doing now, because they THINK it is working. they must think this is what the american people want. i don't know how you all can see anything differently, but YOU ARE ONE OF THEM.

the republicans signed a tax pledge, and then spent us into oblivion when W. bush was president. it is really no surprise that we are where we are.

Obama can't change anything that is what congress is purpose to do. When congress has stop everything that Obama try to put forward. Other small business don't want regulation are your crazy your talk sounds like that of Fox noise.

Just what have the republicans done to raise the cost of living (absolutely noting) if it wasn't for the democrats the cost of living would be like it is in Texas at$5.25 an hour and if that is not true they need to get the federal government in there because that is what they are posting on their personnel bulletins which is illegal

The civic center

Have you been on a different planet, if you have been reading the news in Wisconsin you would know what is going on

The bottom line is that the people are disgusted with the 2010 election, the republicans have lied again like they alway do and the people of Wisconsin are fed up other wise there would be not a recall of the stupid Walker and if you can not see what motivates OPW you have not only been on a different planet you must be on some heavy drugs The only ones that oppose taxes, regulations and labor rights are the republicans. Obama has done more for the workers and unions then any stupid tea party republican in the last 2 years the tea party would rather see the American credit rating go to H--- then stick up for the majority of the American people they are nothing but a bunch of hippocrates that don't know American history they have a bunch of idiots running for President and let that keep going because the Democrats welcome them.

Assuming the union is endorsing Obama I suppose one could visit their website and perhaps ascertain their rationale.

I think the more important question is what will republicans do to screw the unions- if elected.

and not just unions, but all working people.

annie-The reason our credit rating is going down the crapper is the amount of spending is out of control. The left wants to spend more. The right wants to spend less...now who is letting our credit rating go down????

annie-fyi raising the cost of living is not a good thing. Honest mistake don't worry about it. I'm not here to kick sand in your face like some will. It's great that you have a strong opinion. We should all be mad that our government is not living up to our expectations.

"The right wants to spend less"....ROFL, thats a laugh. So all of a sudden the right wants to spend less...after they blew threw the surplus we had under Clinton and Bush spends us into deficit with his RX program, tax breaks for the rich and now all of a sudden the Republican party wants to look like the fiscal heroes? Give me a break. The only people you are heroes to are the rich. Your party is devasting middle class in America and you should be ashamed.

sam- You couldn't be more wrong about the GOP. The democrats want more government and that means more spending.

GOP wants less government=less spending.

Pat I think you misunderstood the GOP, they continually say they want "less spending" but this is sadly a...talking point at best and at worst a lie.

They want a super border fence, you somebody is going to build that for free.

They repeatedly call pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan(aka plan from the very beginning) as letting Iran win so logically that would suggest they would support continuing to send troops, this too is spending.

I haven't heard any talk of cutting subsidies, that's spending.

More support in every way for Israel, so unless that's moral support they're talking about that's spending.

FACT: Neither party actually wants less spending, if they did don't you think the Congress aka the people who control the spending would be doing that?

Ever heard of the 'filibuster'?

John- Obama still got just about everything he asked for during the first 2 years of his Loonacy...I mean Presidency.

If that were only true Pat, but its not. Unlike, of course, Boehner, who said he got everything he wanted in the last agreement.

135 filibusters and counting. If he got everything he wanted then why is that a record?

LOL not even close to every thing he wanted, if he did we be sailing along at a slow to steady pace.

but what he did get is working even with all the road blocks and watering down.

1.8 million private sector jobs, that`s about what the last administration did in 8 years. and think if we had a congress who was helping the GREAT PEOPLE of the USA, instead of Corporations and RICH. we be heading up and out of this night mare!!!

The whole tax the rich more thing is based on the fact that average citizens are having to deal with declines in vital services and other basic government issues like education because of budget deficits. The local communitiies are forced to make huge cuts just to stay alive in some places they're considering have a four day school week because they don't have the money to send the kids for a full work week. So dealing with those issues people are angry at the prospect that they must deal with all these serious cuts but certain politicians, mostly Republicans, are unwilling to even consider raising tax revenues and rates on people who are really doing just fine in terms of money because their conception of "fairness".

So that's really the root of it, the middle class people out there are saying we have to put with cuts to police,fire, schools, etc. and cuts to all those programs but they're not willing to cut tax cuts for people who by comparison to the rest of the population are doing great

This also plays into the larger feeling in the country that the national debate is becoming increasingly more dominated by the concerns of a small group of people as opposed to the majority

people feel that the interests of a small group are dominating the discussions that are supposed to be centered around the greater good of the majority of citizens

Cynical-I hear what your saying....However, we could take every dime that the rich has and it will not even put a dent in our deficit......but could there be another way to achieve what we all want? Jobs Jobs Jobs? Could it be that our government is so corrupt and huge that it is just simply waisting our money? Also, I think that our tax code needs to be shredded and campaign finance reform is badly needed. We need to take the bribery out of Washington. It is happening on BOTH sides of the isle. Thanks for the post. TAP

Well you are correct about the national deficit but what I'm more reffering to is the local government money shortfalls but at the same time this is where the gets blurry. The national debt as you noted is too large to be affected by the proposed new revenues from the "rich" but I think the city and state governments could be helped and that's really the government that actually completely NEEDS that money.

Which also brings up points about how can pay down the national debt? I for one think there is no way that can actually happen and with all the craziness of Greece and the rest of Europe shows that the world banking system we have can't exist logically for the future. I mean have you ever thought about we're(US & Europe) are some of the richest nations in the world, if we're broke what about everybody else in the world? What about Africa and Asia plus the other largely undeveloped parts of the world. Are they super, quantum, mega broke?

Main point when a nation as small as Greece can cause so much "change" in the world market, that market is working under a faulty system.

But now back to domestic policy and jobs, which is equally tricky because it would seem that our government at least our federal government can not effectively create jobs right now for many debatable reasons. So the question becomes have we put ourselves in such a hole that we can never dig ourselves out? While that's a controversial and difficult topic I'd have to say the first step is to let those bush tax rates expire and then examine our financial situation from there in conjunction with shutting down those mid east wars were in.