Supercommittee struggles to reach deficit-cutting deal

WASHINGTON -- With deficit hawks urging them to go big and think long term, a congressional "supercommittee" is struggling toward a minimum agreement that would cut deficits barely a fourth of the $4 trillion in long-term reduction experts say is necessary for long-term government solvency.

The forces holding back a bold agreement get stronger by the day, even though some argue a bigger deal is more politically palatable than a smaller one. With the 2012 presidential campaign starting, is it too late?

Americans could know the answer by next Wednesday. That's when six senators and six members of the House of Representatives, appointed after Congress failed to reach a comprehensive deficit-reduction agreement in August, are required to approve a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion from deficits over the next decade. More than 100 members of the House and 45 senators have signed letters urging the committee to "go big."

Dozens of them attended a news conference Wednesday in which Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., argued that a big deal "says to the world, 'we get it.'

"Going bigger is easier politically," Durbin said. ". . . When you start putting enough on the table that both political parties, House and Senate, realize that this is historic, it is worth the political risk, and if we stand together and lock arms together, we can achieve something as a group which no single individual can achieve."

But he is not part of a majority, and one is hard to find as another crisis moment approaches.

If Congress fails in this latest round of negotiations, the August agreement would force automatic budget cuts beginning in 2013. That is after the next election, which critics said is another case of politicians pushing the problem down the road.

Economists and budget experts say a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction agreement, on top of $1 trillion agreed to in August, may avoid another short-term meltdown and political recrimination that led to a downgrade of the U.S. bond rating, but it won't produce sustainable budgetary conditions. Deficit reduction closer to $4 trillion, however, would signal to financial markets and allies that the United States was serious about avoiding crises that have stricken Greece, Italy and other European nations.

That $4 trillion target was roughly what a presidential commission chaired by former Bill Clinton adviser Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming recommended almost a year ago. Roughly two of three dollars would have come through spending cuts, the rest from higher revenues. But after that bipartisan recommendation, Congress and President Barack Obama returned to political trench warfare, each protecting turf considered essential for their re-election in 2012. With Iowa's caucus-goers about six weeks from making the first mark on the Republican primary field, the impetus to get closer to the $4 trillion target diminishes by the day.

"I am optimistic that they can meet their target of $1.2 trillion or $1.5 trillion," said former Rep. Bill Frenzel, a Republican from Minnesota, who wrote a report with three other former members of Congress urging the deficit panel and Congress to "go big, long, smart." "I am less optimistic that they will be able to follow our instructions about going big."

Why?