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The House will vote as soon as Tuesday on forming a special committee of House and Senate members to work out a deal on reopening the government and raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling, multiple GOP sources told The Hill. The move is an attempt to highlight what the GOP sees as a refusal by Democrats to compromise in order to end the budget crisis. It also echoes the creation of a debt supercommittee to resolve the last debt ceiling impasse in 2011. Lawmakers will separately vote on legislation to pay essential federal personnel, including those working right now...

During Monday evening’s final presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, the president said he and his administration didn’t offer the so-called budget “sequester” as a tool to cut the military budget, despite reports alleging he did.“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said during the debate in Boca Raton, Fla. “It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen.”That directly contradicts a 2012 book from investigative journalist Bob Woodward — the Washington Post editor who, with Carl Bernstein, took down President Richard Nixon over the 1970s-era Watergate scandal. “Then-OMB Director Jack Lew, now the...

<p>Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as chair of the House Budget Committee, was part of the team that signed off on the budget deal with the White House, mandating immediate spending cuts, creating a "Super-committee" tasked to finding $1.5 trillion in further deficit rediction, and raising a self-imposed sword of Damocles - $1.2 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon and domestic spending that few in Congress wanted - if the Super-committee failed.</p>

ABOARD THE USS PELELIU – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Marines and sailors on Friday that Congress would be irresponsible if it doesn't act to prevent drastic military budget cuts. In a visit to this amphibious assault ship off the Southern California coast, he also said Afghanistan is making progress against the Taliban but Iran remains a potential threat to the U.S. A budget agreement reached last August calls for defense cuts of $487 billion over a decade, a reflection of the drawdown of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the pressure to reduce the nation's deficit. The failure...

Herman Cain tells National Review Online that he will launch a new political-action committee in January. The outfit, whose final name remains under wraps, will be Cain’s main project next year. Its mission will be to enact his “9-9-9” economic plan. “We continue the campaign without a candidate,” says Cain, who hinted at the endeavor during his departure speech. “There are a lot of people who are willing to support the campaign for solutions without the end objective being my election as president of the United States.” As Cain transitions to private life, “Friends of Herman Cain,” the financial force...

Military Spending: The head of the House Armed Services Committee says already enacted and looming defense cuts could cost the economy a million and a half jobs. It could cost the nation much more than that. As we've written, the upcoming mandated cuts in defense spending, on top of already enacted cuts,are real cuts, not cuts in the rate of growth. They are deep cuts in the budget baseline that will impair military readiness and our ability to meet our commitments and respond to crises around the world. They will also take a toll on the nation's job picture. Rep....

In the Budget Control Act of 2011, Congress created the Super Committee. The Super Committee, technically called the "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction," was chartered with the responsibility to "reduce the deficit by at least $1,500,000,000,000 over the period of fiscal years 2012 to 2021." In the attempt to force a compromise on deficit reduction, the House and Senate decided to mandate specific cuts in defense and domestic programs to include Medicare, should the Super Committee not solve the deficit reduction problem. The total reduction spending cuts under various assumptions in the bill could amount to over $1.2 trillion...

The 2012 political year is right around the corner and the recent failure by the so-called "Super Committee" to reach agreement on $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction will re-cast the environment on Capitol Hill and shape the 2012 campaign. With divided control of Congress, and a 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate, major Congressional action before the 2012 election is now extremely unlikely. Congress always seems to need a deadline to make the members focus on the country's business, and December promises to be a busy month. It's likely that members of Congress will do the following: - Pass yet...

In the Budget Control Act of 2011, Congress created the Super Committee. The Super Committee, technically called the "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction," was chartered with the responsibility to "reduce the deficit by at least $1,500,000,000,000 over the period of fiscal years 2012 to 2021." In the attempt to force a compromise on deficit reduction, the House and Senate decided to mandate specific cuts in defense and domestic programs to include Medicare, should the Super Committee not solve the deficit reduction problem. The total reduction spending cuts under various assumptions in the... --snip-- Whenever two or more groups have...

More More MoreHow do you like Andrea True's federal government? I see Andrea True died earlier this month. The late disco diva enjoyed a brief moment of global celebrity in 1976 with her ubiquitous glitterball favorite:  More More More  How do you like it? How do you like it? More More More How do you like it? How do you like it? In honor of Andrea’s passing, I have asked my congressman to propose the adoption of this song as the U.S. national anthem. True, Miss True wrote the number as an autobiographical reflection on her days as a porn-movie...

Supercommittee member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) accused Democrats on Monday of torpedoing the deficit supercommittee because a success would have “stepped on” President Obama’s campaign narrative. Speaking Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Toomey said there’s “something to” suggestions that Democrats had an incentive to see the supercommittee fail. “That goes to the asymmetry of the incentives and I think there was something to that,” Toomey said. “The president’s fundamental campaign message was to run against Congress - never mind the fact that half of Congress is controlled by the Democrats, but that’s his purpose, and certainly an agreement in this...

More than the curious “lead from behind” strategy often preferred by Barack Obama, an apt description of his efforts to steer the Super Committee to an acceptable conclusion would best be described as “in absentia.”  Both Republicans and Democrats noted with disappointment the President’s absence in a challenge that was always thought to be difficult at best – even doomed, in the opinion of many experienced Congressional observers.  The morning after the announced failure by the committee members to reach a solution, Jay Carney was asked by a reporter if the President had bothered to talk with even one of...

We do not choose to add more to the blame game for failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction , but one Democratic talking point needs debunking: that the talks failed because of Republicans’ attachment to the Bush tax cuts. The untold story of the negotiations is the significance of the Republican offer of fundamental tax reform. It is critical to understand the interplay between the proposal (dubbed the "Toomey plan") and existing tax law. At no time in the negotiations did the Democratic committee members drop their insistence that, one way or the other, any deal had...

All now know that the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction has failed to reach an agreement. While there will still be $1.2 trillion of spending cuts as guaranteed under the Budget Control Act, we regrettably missed a historic opportunity to lift the burden of debt and help spur economic growth and job creation. Americans deserve an explanation. President Obama summed up our debt crisis best when he told Republican members of the House in January 2010 that "The major driver of our long-term liabilities . . . is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending." A few months later,...

Democrats can’t tell the difference between tax revenues and tax rates.Democrats are unanimous in charging that the debt-reduction supercommittee collapsed because Republicans refused to raise taxes. Apparently, Republicans are in the thrall of one Grover Norquist, the anti-tax campaigner, whom Sen. John Kerry called “the 13th member of this committee without being there.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid helpfully suggested “maybe they should impeach Grover Norquist.” With that, Norquist officially replaces the Koch brothers as the great malevolent manipulator that controls the republic by pulling unseen strings on behalf of the plutocracy.

Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) Monday said a deal to cut the federal deficit fell apart because Republicans refused to raise taxes, and said the issue would be the defining debate for Congress as the country heads toward the 2012 elections. "America is stuck with the absolute rigidity of people who wanted to protect the wealthiest people in the country instead of providing $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction," Kerry said in impassioned remarks hours after the congressional panel announced it had failed to reach a deal. "That's the fight we have to take out to the country over the course...

Thomas Sowell identifies the true and only significance of the "super committee," which ended its negotiations in failure. Supposedly draconian cuts are to follow, which naturally will not transpire. All that has happened is that blame for reckless spending will shift from the party that spent onto the party that for the most part opposed spending. [quote] If you think the goal was to solve the country's fiscal crisis, then obviously the Super Committee was a complete failure. But, if you think the goal was to improve the chances of the Obama administration being re-elected in 2012, it was a...

In other words, they’re going to waste everyone’s time. (The Hill) – After failing to reach a deal to reduce the deficit, the Senate will move next month to take up legislation that could add more than $400 billion to the deficit. All of the proposals, such as the extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, are popular but come with no agreement on how to pay for them. Senate Democrats will go on offense next week by forcing Republicans to vote on extending and expanding the payroll tax cut, which accounts for $240 billion of the tab,...

<p>PENSACOLA NAVAL AIR STATION, Fla. — The Navy's Blue Angels have been thrilling audiences for more than six decades with their acrobatic flying in fighter planes, but a new era of federal budget worries and proposed deficit cutting has some inside and outside the military raising questions about the millions it costs to produce their shows.</p>