Responsibility for cutting the nation’s debt is now back to Congress as the super committee officially admits failure. Just hours before their midnight deadline, the leaders of the bipartisan panel issued a statement about the deadlock. They said, “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.”
The breakdown of the super committee will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over 10 years…including up to $600 billion from the Defense Department. A number of Republicans are already working to stop the military cuts, slated to take effect in 2013 but President Obama is vowing to block those efforts. Speaking at the White House last night, he said, “I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending . There will be no easy off-ramps on this one.”
Michele Norris is a Senior Contributing Editor for MS NOW. Recommended
