The supercommittee apparently wasn't so super. The members announced Monday they would not be able to meet the deadline of Nov. 23 for finding $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in savings in our federal government over the next 10 years.

This group of 12 members of Congress was born when Congress passed the Budget Control Act on Aug. 1. This act was a result of the nation's debt limit needing to be increased, so a deal was made between the president and our Congress. According to the Budget Control Act, if Congress failed to pass legislation saving at least $1.2 trillion,  an across-the-board cut would occur. This process, known as a sequester, would take place in January of 2013. The Department of Defense would take the biggest hit under the sequester scenario since the law stated that DOD would bear 50 percent of the cuts needed to reach the $1.2 trillion in savings. Other nondefense agencies would feel a 48 percent cut and Medicare would get the final 2 percent in cuts.

The political spin-shysters are saying the committee's failure is ultimately OK because our federal budget will still be cut by the sequester process. This writer says, not so fast. Let’s look at past history for a minute to see if anyone really believes that Congress is going to allow the sequester to take place. After all, it is past congresses that got our country to the point that our debt just topped out at $15 trillion last week. So here is a bit of history as to how Congress handled other budget deals that were supposedly going to cut our federal budget.

Back in the mid-1980s the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act was created by former Sens. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Ernest Hollings, D-S.C. It called for sequesters or across-the-board cuts to control our federal spending. These sequesters were much like the sequester language contained in the current Budget Control Act. In the first five years under the GRH bill, two sequesters occurred. The results were:

 

1. The amounts in the sequester were changed by future legislation.
2. The sequester was overridden by subsequent debt agreements.

The Gramm/ Rudman/Hollings (GRH No. 1) was revised two years later because it was deemed unworkable and thus Congress created GRH No. 2. After three more years of trying to live under GRH No. 2, Congress usurped the bill with the Budget Enforcement Act.

By the 1990s, Congress was now trying to live under the Budget Enforcement Act. The bill set limits on spending and created a "pay-go" type of restraint. This meant that Congress couldn't spend more money than it had. Consequently, Congress had to pay for every program it created or funded. However, there were so many major government programs that were exempted from the "pay-go" rules that the BEA became worthless. However, while the BEA was in place, three sequesters occurred. The results were: