Politico: Behind the scenes of the panel’s meltdown
It was Friday afternoon when chances to reach a deal by the moribund supercommittee fell to two of the most important men on Capitol Hill not elected to Congress — David Krone and Barry Jackson.
Krone, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) chief of staff, and Jackson, the top aide to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), had been quietly deputized to find a last-ditch deal and avert yet another failure of Congress’s own making. Both had been here before — they were instrumental in preventing the government from shutting down this spring and raising the national debt ceiling this summer.
But moments after Krone rejected one of Jackson’s proposals over the issue of taxes, details of the negotiations leaked to the press. Krone and the Senate Democrats were furious, the talks blew up and, in effect, so did the supercommittee.
The three-month slog that was formally known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed because of a politically unpalatable mix of distrust, divided motives and the partisan toxicity in Washington. Its demise was widely lamented as a “missed opportunity” by lawmakers in both parties, but there were clear signs from the very start that it was going to be enormously difficult to find the “sweet spot” for a mega budget deal.
Despite public proclamations of optimism, the panel hadn’t formally met in weeks and some of its members had started to leave town for Thanksgiving this past weekend.
On Monday, the supercommittee’s co-chairs, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), officially declared defeat.
But the final curtain fell after Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) made a last-second proposal calling for several hundred billion dollars in new tax revenue, with the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees working out the final details — including the top tax rates. Republicans swatted the offer away as way too little, way too late.
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