The Super Congress says they'll make reporters and bloggers have to stick close to their computers over the weekend (thanks, guys) by promising to continue negotiations, but that effort is appearing
increasingly futile, in part because the consequences just aren't that profound.
If the congressional "supercommittee" cannot agree on a plan to tame the federal debt by next week's deadline, as now appears likely, here’s what will happen: nothing.
The automatic spending cuts that were supposed to force the panel to deliver more palatable options would not take effect until January 2013. That leaves lawmakers a full year to devise alternatives. [...]
[H]ope for an agreement appeared all but lost Thursday. Even normally optimistic aides close to the process conceded that it may be time to pull the plug.
Despite the increasingly shrill warnings from austerity fetishists like the Third Way, the nation doesn't explode on Thanksgiving Day because the Super Congress didn't come up with a plan by the day before. S&P and Moody's will yawn, the American people will still hate Congress, and unemployment will still be unacceptably high. But people receiving Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid won't be looking at benefits cuts, and that's an unqualified good.
That's unless Democrats fail to recognize that they've got the advantage and end up caving, trading the safety net for whatever magic beans the GOP peddles to them.
Failure is the best result all the way around, not in the least because it makes it ever so slightly likelier that the Bush tax cuts (what this whole mess basically boils down to) expire.