The New Super Committee or the 'Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction'.....
is it Constitutional? Have we ever seen other committees like this in the Past?
A brief synopsis of the Committee and it's function:
The Budget Control Act increased the debt ceiling by $400 billion in August 2011, and required the federal government to make $917 billion in spending cuts over a ten-year period as a first installment,[3] in keeping with estimates from the Congressional Budget Office[14] which assume that the current laws will stay the same, and that the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 would expire at the end of 2012, leading to government revenues rising from 2013 to 2015. (wikipedia)
Debt limit:
- The debt limit is increased by $400 billion immediately.[2]
- The President may request a further increase of $500 billion, which is subject to a congressional motion of disapproval which the President may veto, in which case a two-thirds majority in Congress would be needed to override the veto.[3] This has been called the 'McConnell mechanism' after the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who first suggested it as part of another scheme.[4]
- The President may request a final increase of $1.2–1.5 trillion, subject to the same disapproval procedure. The exact amount depends on the amount of cuts in the "super committee" plan if it passes Congress, and whether a Balanced Budget Amendment has been passed.[3]
Deficit reduction:
- Spending is reduced more than the increase in the debt limit. No tax increases or other forms of increases in revenue above current law are included in the bill.[5]
- The bill directly specifies $917 billion of cuts over 10 years in exchange the initial debt limit increase of $900 billion.[5] This is the first installment ("tranche") of cuts. $21 billion of this will be applied in the FY2012 budget.[4]
- Additionally, the agreement establishes the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, sometimes called the "super committee",[1] that would produce debt reduction legislation by November 23, 2011, that would be immune from amendments or filibuster (similar to the Base Realignment and Closure).[4][6] The goal of the legislation is to cut at least $1.5 trillion over the coming 10 years and be passed by December 23, 2011.[6] Projected revenue from the committee's legislation must not exceed the revenue budgeting baseline produced by current law. (Current law has the Bush tax cutsexpiring at the end of 2012.) The committee would have 12 members, 6 from each party.[5]
- The agreement specifies an incentive for Congress to act. If Congress fails to produce a deficit reduction bill with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts, then Congress can grant a $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling but this would trigger across-the-board cuts ("sequestration") of spending equally split between security and non-security programs.[4][3] The across-the-board cuts would apply to mandatory and discretionary spending in the years 2013 to 2021 and be in an amount equal to the difference between $1.2 trillion and the amount of deficit reduction enacted from the joint committee. The sequestration mechanism is the same as the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. There are exemptions—across the board cuts would apply to Medicare providers, but not to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, civil and military employee pay, or veterans.[4][5] Security programs include the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, some management functions of the intelligence community, and international affairs from the U.S. State Department.[7]
Balanced Budget Amendment:
- Congress must vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment between October 1, 2011, and the end of 2011,[3] but is not required to pass it and send it to the states in order for the debt limit increases to occur (as was the case in the previous Cut, Cap and Balance Act, which was not enacted).[4]
Other provisions:
- Pell grant funding is increased, but other financial aid is cut. Graduate and professional students will no longer be eligible for interest subsidized loans.[8] Repayment incentives will also be done away with after July 1, 2012.[9]
Structure of the Committee:
- Must be appointed by August 16, 2011
- Consist of twelve members of Congress
- 6 from the House of Representatives
6 from the Senate
Members:Democrats Republicans Senate members - Patty Murray, Washington, Co-Chair
- Max Baucus, Montana
- John Kerry, Massachusetts
- Jon Kyl, Arizona
- Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania
- Rob Portman, Ohio
House members - Jim Clyburn, South Carolina
- Xavier Becerra, California
- Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
- Jeb Hensarling, Texas, Co-Chair
- Dave Camp, Michigan
- Fred Upton, Michigan
Info from Wikipedia
Constitutionality of this "Super Committee"?
Eugene Volokh, blogger at the blog spot The Volokh Conspiracy writes this:
The Committee, the Wikipedia entry labeled “United States Congress Joint Select Commit...,
is an illegal, unconstitutional joint select committee, created by the Budget Control Act of 2011, enacted on August 2, 2011. The Act was intended to consolidate dictatorial power and prevent the rapid process of sovereign default that would have resulted from the 2011 U.S. Debt Ceiling Crisis and forced the U.S. government to be more accountable for their actions.
I expect that the rhetoric will be removed in the Wikipedia entry in due course, but I’ve heard others likewise argue that the committee is somehow an unconstitutional “Super Congress” to which congressional power has been improperly delegated. (* he's right - it HAS been changed ~ Mellie)
I don’t think this is right; Amanda Rice (Just Enrichment) has a good analysis of why the plan for the Committee (see Title IV of the Budget Control Act) is indeed constitutional, and commenter Brian Bishop adds more on the nondelegation point. Here’s my quick analysis:
1. Article I, § 5 of the Constitution provides that “Each House may determine the Rules of its proceedings.” This is the basis for how a wide variety of Congressional decisions are delegated in the first instance to committees, and how some matters are delegated to joint committees. And the Act makes clear that, “The provisions of this title are enacted by Congress ... as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively, and as such they shall be considered as part of the rules of each House, respectively, or of that House to which they specifically apply.”
2. This power doesn’t extend to actually allowing some other body, whether a Committee or not, to do things that themselves have the force of law. (See INS v. Chadha.) But under this proposal, the Joint Select Committee would simply submit its work product to Congress; as usual, the House and the Senate would decide whether to enact the law, and the President would decide whether to sign it. To be sure, the fast-track mechanism, with the restrictions on amendments and on the time available for debate, is unusual, and is intended to make the Committee’s work product especially influential. But again that’s part of the Houses’ power to make rules — the time available for debate and the possibility of amendment are themselves artifacts of the current rules of the Houses, and each House may alter those rules for particular kinds of legislation. (My understanding is that this is what has happened, for instance, with the fast-track trade agreement rules.)
3. Of course, the rules made by the Houses at one point may be changed later, and the Act acknowledges this: “The provisions of this title are enacted by Congress ... with full recognition of the constitutional right of either House to change such rules (so far as relating to such House) at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as in the case of any other rule of such House.” It might be politically difficult to go back on the fast-track system created by the Act — just as it’s politically difficult to cut back on the filibuster in the Senate, another example of an important feature of our political system that’s created by a Rule of one of the Houses — and I think the authors of the Act wanted that to be politically difficult. But that doesn’t make the rule change unconstitutional.
Other Committees that are similar to the "Super Committee":
Failed Committees:
The only 'successful' Committee to have been established:
Sarah A. Binder, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institute, in her article states the following:
Based on this limited history, it’s worth speculating some more about the factors that will shape the success of the Joint Committee.Authorization:Some commissions are formed by executive order; others, by statute. The deck is stacked against commissions formed by executive order since such groups can’t be granted legislative authority (for example, to report and to secure chamber votes). Only Congress and the president can do that by creating commissions through statute. So, for example, the Kerry-Danforth 1993 commission was probably doomed to fail, having been established by executive order. The Joint Committee’s statutory basis gives it a leg up compared to many of the recent, most salient examples.
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