Reply #119: I wish you folks wouldn't worry so much about this.

[sofa king]

The first thing to note is that this bicameral committee does not have the power to pass legislation. All they can do is make recommendations to Congress as a whole. There are at least half a dozen major ways that committee can be stalled, delayed, or otherwise prevented from doing any harm. (I personally am convinced that this body was intentionally created to fail, but that's another story.)

I think there is a low probability that the recommendations of the committee will actually meet their objectives, in which case the President wins and his automatic cuts go into effect. I think they will either fail to find the monetary value of cuts and revenue needed to proceed, or they will miss the deadline.

But say they do succeed, and the recommendations are passed on to the House and the Senate. The Republican-controlled House will gut the recommendations, load their version of the bill with further pain and suffering for the poor and middle class while sheltering the rich, and further piss voters off. If they do manage to put together an actual bill and pass it, the Senate will simply laugh and kill it.

In the meantime, the legislation will have an even harder time in the Senate. Again, there are at least half a dozen major ways the legislation can be killed before it even comes to a vote. An anonymous hold can be placed on the bill, causing the Senate version to miss the deadline. It can be filibustered, also missing the deadline. And so on.

But again, say they do succeed to pass through both houses. Then a single version of the bill has to be agreed upon in a conference committee. That won't be easy because the Democratic Senators will have done their job while the Republicans in the House will have turned it into a cash-cow for their greedy interests.

The Republicans have yet to have a single major issue they wanted pass in conference this year. So that plan isn't going to work for them, either.

But pretend that somehow, the GOP plays ball and passes something close to a real, working bill. Then the final version has to be passed by the House and Senate again, again with all the potential for procedural delay and non-passage.

So pretend that happens, and then guess what? The President gets to look it over and either sign it into law or veto it. But here's the thing: the President's plan is the plan that falls into place if the legislation fails, so unless, after all that work and all that handling by greedy criminals, the Congressional plan meets or exceeds the President's own objectives, the President gets to kill it and revert everything back to his original plan.

There is simply no way for the Republicans to advance their own goals in this process. They've already been headed off at every pass. Any early success on their part will inevitably lead to ultimate failure. In fact, the entire process appears to be designed to allow the Republicans to act as they normally do, without the repercussions that usually result, causing them political damage without any political rewards. And at the end of it all, if the President does not get more of what he personally wants, the process dies and the President's plan is the one that goes forward.

So now would be a good time to sit back and marvel at how clever this plan is. It reminds me very much of a "consequence net" that is tossed over a misbehaving child: only good behavior can be rewarded, while the expected behavior will be punished.