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They have not announced all the members, but they have made some early positions clear. 1) Nancy Pelosi will be on the committee, and 2) No one who voted *against* the bill will be allowed on the committee. Therefore, everyone on the Republican side who might not be a RINO is to be excluded.

It's my understanding that the four leaders Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, and McConnell will each get a seat on the committee and then each leader will choose 2 members from their party to fill the remainder of the seats. It will take a majority 7 out of 12 votes with at least one vote from each party (I assume since you would have to have one vote from the opposing party to reach 7 anyway since their are 6 members from each party, the section of the bill is rather obvious) Any spending cut recommendations passed would be guaranteed an up or down vote in the house and senate. There is some controversy on whether the committee can forward tax increases or only spending cuts, Boehner and Cantor says it can only forward spending cut's, the democrats disagree.

The factor you don't seem to be discussing is whether the Congress as a whole can modify the committee 'recommendations' or only accept/reject them. An up or down vote just means they don't get tabled, not that they can't be amended.

If they can be amended or modified without enacting the triggers, then your position that the power remains with the Congress as a whole is valid. If the only choices Congress as a whole faces are to accept the recommendations as written, or to accept draconian cuts in Defense and cuts in payments to health care providers, then Congress will almost certainly have to accept the Committee's decisions, which gives them enormous power.

On the "7 votes" thing I expect it's intended to preclude 'dark of the night' meetings of a portion of the committee who declare a decision based on a majority of a subset which is not a majority of the whole committee. Absent members or 'present' votes amount to a no vote. The bit about including at least one member from each party does appear to be redundant.

Regardless of current intentions from Boehner and Cantor, you can bet that the Committee is going to have members who intend otherwise. This Committee is certainly going to be recommending tax increases because that's all the Dims wll allow. Reid has said so. If the Republican's balk, then the triggers are invoked.

One of the real signs of how badly Boehner was outmaneuvered on this is that both triggers benefit the Dims. They'd love to see defense totally gutted in favor of their international socialist agenda, and if Medicare payments are cut, then it won't be long before health care providers decline Medicare patients. Reports of that will bring a renewed demand for socialized medicine. (Even though the 'public option' is just Medicare extended to everyone, which means health-care providers *still* won't be getting paid.)