Political India: Engaging America

When the approval rating of an institution is at an all-time low of nine per cent, one would think it would go out of its way to avoid any glaring failure in carrying out its duty.

Yet, even after the reputational debacle that the U.S.Congress suffered over the summer owing to its near-failure to reach a deal on a limit for the ballooning debt, it has again endangered its credibility in the eyes of voters.

In the months following those precipitous negotiations over the debt limit, the Congress' so-called deficit-reduction “supercommittee” failed to hammer out a deal on further public spending cuts before its Monday midnight deadline.

While rating agencies are closely watching these developments, the U.S. may have temporarily escaped an S&P-style downgrade since President Barack Obama's plan, approved by Congress, will now require automatic cuts across vast swathes of the budget, including the Republican-cherished area of defence expenditure.

Though $1.2 trillion in additional cuts was at stake, the committee could not reach a bipartisan consensus on where these cuts would be applied, with Republican intransigence on the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires forming the bulwark of their opposition.

Democrats refused to sign off on deep cuts into Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, welfare programmes aimed at the most vulnerable members of society.

With an unmistakable tenor of shame, the supercommittee co-chairs, Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican Congressman Jeb Hensarling, said in a statement, “After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline.”

Mr. Obama, who may well mould the Republican blockades into a campaign plank for the presidential elections, struck a defiant note scarcely an hour after the passage of the deadline.

Broad agreement

“Despite the broad agreement that exists for such an approach, there's still too many Republicans in Congress who have refused to listen to the voices of reason and compromise that are coming from outside of Washington. They continue to insist on protecting $100 billion worth of tax cuts for the wealthiest two per cent of Americans at any cost, even if it means reducing the deficit with deep cuts to things like education and medical research,” said Mr. Obama.

Further warning his opposition against efforts to undermine the automatic cuts, which are expected to kick in by early 2013, he said, “My message to them is simple: No. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defence spending,” adding, “There will be no easy off ramps on this one.”