OPINION:
Ire over the economy may also include fear of the supercommittee morphing into a super monstrosity if the 12 selected members of Congress fail to handle all the new demands made of them. Is such a committee destined to becoming a catch-all for ever more unwieldy items from the White House and Congress?
If the president has added some $450 billion in cuts to the plate of cuts already before the committee, and Speaker of the House John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, adds to it the suggestion that the committee should “go big by laying the groundwork for a full rewrite of the U.S. tax code,” can just 12 committee members really summon the necessary appetite to digest everything on such a plate by the Thanksgiving deadline?
Maybe the idea of a supercommittee isn’t as super as first thought and the committee should consider either limiting the number of items on its plate or taking Newt Gingrich’s advice during a recent GOP presidential debate and returning to regular legislative order.
S.A. ZOBANS
Independence, Mo.
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