U.S. Debt Supercommittee Ready to Announce Failure

BLOOMBERG

A debt-reduction committee with special powers that was supposed to dissolve congressional gridlock in Washington is instead on the brink of failure, setting the stage for $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts.

U.S. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican on the 12- member panel, said on CNBC today that the supercommittee’s Republican and Democratic co-chairmen, Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, would make a formal announcement “toward the end of the day.” They are expected to say that the panel can’t reach agreement on determining deficit reductions of at least $1.2 trillion.

Today is the deadline for the Congressional Budget Office to receive information for analyzing how a proposal would affect the U.S. budget deficit, in advance of the supercommittee’s Nov. 23 target date for reaching a deal. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has declared over the past few months that failure is “not an option” for the panel, which was created in August after rancorous debate over raising the nation’s borrowing limit that plunged congressional approval ratings to lows of between 9 percent and 14 percent.

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