The Super Congress? Who will be in it?

We know that the Republicans will put members from their caucus that will not raise taxes and will not compromise on anything unless they get their way. There will be six Republicans and six Democrats on this "super" committee. All they need is one vote to go either way. If there is a deadlock, the so-called "triggers" will kick in.

But the question is: Who will the Democrats put on the Committee? Surely they would not put a Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson on it? That would be too obvious. But it's conceivable to see a "moderate" like Jim Webb or Mark Warner on it. We will know where the Democrats stand when they name their half of this "super" Congress. They should hope for the triggers to kick in but don't bet on it.

This will be interesting. Some folks are watching this very closely. Are the Democrats going to fold once again? Or will they stand their ground and let the triggers take effect?

Clink, Clink, Cling as the can is kicked further down the road. Without deeper and further cuts, We're being flushed down the toilet. Shut down all overseas bases and return all the forces home. Tell the military/industrial complex we can't afford their waste. Reduce across the board expenses and eliminate the "Bush" tax cuts. We cannot afford .40 cents of every dollar spent to be borrowed. These cuts will hurt but without them we cannot re-gain stability.

to a stalemate, then a we have seen before, one of them will join the Republicans and there you will have it.

My guess is that the game is fixed, only we'll know it from the get-go.

For those willing to look.

The game is fixed.

It looks to me like the President has already used the extant state of emergency to quietly enact the provisions of NSPD-51, in which the President asserts the authority given him by the Republican Congress of the double-aughts to "coordinate" the actions of Congress--oh yes, George Bush did claim he could do that, and the Republicans in Congress aren't in any damned position to disagree with that now. (Last year, this President quietly extended the state of emergency under which the U.S. has operated since September, 2001, probably exactly so he could pull this little rabbit out of the hat.)

That would explain why the final compromise actually expanded the President's own plan, while leaving all the proposals of Congress itself on the cutting-room floor.

In what universe would the most evil political party since the goddamned Nazis agree to such a thing? In the one in which they already built a dictatorship for an irresponsible frat boy who fucked things up so bad he decided to walk away from it, and then handed it off to the exact wrong guy.

As far as this committee goes, it's set up in such a way that the Democrats can quietly destroy any consensus, ensuring that half a trillion dollars is parted from the Department of Defense without a single Democratic Member of Congress ever having to directly vote for such a thing.

Thus the President appears to have found a way to make difficult defense cuts while shielding Democrats and focusing all of the electoral fallout onto the Republicans.

The unfortunate downside of this is that if I am correct, we are now effectively a dictatorship operating behind the thin veil of democracy.

Amid the disappointments lately, I was happy to find a ray of hope. Appears our party's biggest deficit hawks might be left out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/democrats-super-committee-members_n_921370.html

House-A non-bomb throwing liberal, a moderate, and a blue dog.

Specifically, if the full Congress does not pass the recommendations of the "Super Congress", then there is some sort of trigger that will cause automatic cuts in spending.

The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings act in the 1980's had a provision that called for automatic spending cuts. That act was struck down by the Supreme Court. Who is going to decide where to cut spending? The Comptroller General, the Congressional Budget Office? Congress can't delegate legislative authority to the executive branch.

I hope that there is a lawsuit challenging this.