Last week, the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (aka, the "SuperCommittee") that had been tasked with creating a bipartisan agreement to reduce the debt by $2.2 trillion, announced that they would not be able to "make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline." This failure has consequences. This weekend, my thoughts on the committee's announcement and what it means for our country were published in Contra Costa Times. From the Contra Costa Times:

Supercommittee failure means automatic spending cuts
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 11/26/2011 04:00:00 PM PST

This summer, to avoid the politically manufactured threat of defaulting on the federal debt, Congress made an agreement to reduce the debt by at least $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years.

Nearly $1 trillion of the reduction would come from scheduled cuts to discretionary defense and nondefense spending and the rest from the work of the so-called supercommittee through new revenues, more spending cuts, or both. If the supercommittee failed, $1.2 trillion in additional automatic cuts would hit defense and domestic spending equally beginning in January 2013.

I never liked this plan, but it is the one that both parties agreed to, including conservative tea party Republicans closely allied with Pentagon spending.

The supercommittee failed. Now, Congress must honor its agreement.

Failure came as no surprise. The Republican leadership in Congress and their committee designees made it clear that their highest national priority is protecting the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent in our country, even though there is no way to balance the budget with the tax cuts to the wealthy in place.

The automatic cuts could have been avoided. Had Republican negotiators been willing to put real new revenues on the negotiating table, the supercommittee could have achieved its goal. But they refused to call on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, even though many of them believe they should pay more in taxes, and Republicans rejected every one of the Democrats' balanced proposals.

Despite the high cost of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the worst income disparity in our country's history and the desperate condition of America's middle class, Republicans in Congress chose to protect millionaires and billionaires rather than solve our country's serious problems.

Now, some want to renege on the deal.

They want to spare the Pentagon from the automatic cuts they voted for. Fortunately, President Barack Obama has made it clear that he would veto any bill that seeks to overturn the automatic cuts. I support him 100 percent on this point.

If Republicans wanted to avoid deep Pentagon cuts, they shouldn't have chosen to block a committee agreement by shielding millionaires and billionaires. They took a stand for the "1 percent," not for the country. They can't protect millionaires and the Pentagon. It doesn't work that way now.

Failure has its consequences.

Congress has other important decisions to make now. Unemployment insurance for millions of Americans will expire in January. If we fail to extend it, jobs will be lost and dinner tables will go empty. The payroll tax cut also expires at the end of the year. Failure to extend it will increase taxes for the average American by $1,000 and hurt the economy and jobs.

Average working people can't afford for Congress to fail on these two issues also.
Then there are the Bush-era tax cuts. If Congress does nothing, they will expire at the end of 2012, reducing deficits by $4 trillion but also raising taxes for the middle class, millionaires and billionaires. That would be another consequence of the Republican leadership's refusal to agree to a balanced and bold debt reduction plan.

I never had great confidence in the supercommittee given unanimous Republican opposition to new revenues. But that was the process Congress promised the American people.

The consequence of failure is painful automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and nondefense domestic services. There is still time to approve a $1.2 trillion debt reduction plan to avoid the automatic cuts. But if we don't, those cuts should take place across the board -- just as we said they would.

George Miller is the Democratic congressman from Martinez.