House Dems Brush Off Supercommittee Failure

By Tim Young

The Congressional supercommittee’s failure to reach an agreement will have less of an impact than some in Washington believe, according to Congressmen John Larson (D-Conn.) and Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.).

“I don’t see anyone diverting from the goal of trying to come up with the savings that can be achieved and indeed the committee did an awful lot of good work there,” Larson told reporters before a meeting with the House Democratic caucus.

He continued by saying that the committee also did a good job ensuring that entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security remain protected.

 “The supercommittee was nothing more, nothing less than a way to come up with a smarter package of deficit reduction than the automatic triggers,” Becerra said, agreeing with his colleague. “Our job was simply to come up with a substitute for what would take place automatically and that’s where the missed opportunity occurred.”

Becerra, who sat on the 12-member panel, added that the opportunity to have a smarter debt reduction plan has not ended with the failure of the committee and that the correct way to fix the debt is by proposing a fair and balanced plan that benefits no special interest more than any other.

“You just can’t have candy, you gotta eat the vegetables at some point,” said Becerra