Reuters
Analysis
It didn't seem like mission impossible just two weeks ago.
Inside a private room on the first floor of the U.S. Senate, seven members of Washington's debt "super committee," munching beef jerky and talking taxes, thought for the first time a deal might be at hand.
Nine days after that November 7 meeting, it was all but over. Accusations of media leaks and bad faith had led to a fatal breakdown of trust among committee members fundamentally divided over the ideology of taxation and spending.
Trust that had been so painstakingly built by the six Republicans and six Democrats since the panel first began meeting nine weeks earlier unraveled at alarming speed.
By November 16 the super committee was essentially dead, according to interviews with senior aides and officials with intimate knowledge of the talks.
NBC Politics - Insight: Super committee had glimpse of elusive compromise
I am so disappointed over this. I foolishly thought it would work. Of course my first instinct is to blame the Republicans because they are usually at fault, in my view.
I really love Dr. Phil and he says something all the time that I am going to try and always consider. He always says that no matter how flat you make a pancake, there is always two sides. So in this case I guess both sides of this particular pancake deserve the blame.
Nobody should be giving this group a shred of credit. Either side. Whatever compromise they were close to getting to would be an absolute joke. The republican proposal was an abosolute. It basically amounted to throwing a thimble of water on a blazing house fire. And the democrats who are on another planet they're so removed from the reality of teh debt were even worse than that. It is going to take a RADICAL change in how the government operates and it's role in society to fix this now and there is hardly a single member of congress that is even close to getting that.