Jon Kyl threatens to quit the supercommittee in a huff? Well, boo-hoo!

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl: If he quits the supercommittee, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

by Ken

Jon Kyl: I'd quit supercommittee over defense cuts

By CHARLES HOSKINSON | 9/8/11 1:42 PM EDT Updated: 9/8/11 4:27 PM EDT

It has only met once, but Sen. Jon Kyl is already threatening to quit the deficit busting supercommittee if the panel pushes more defense cuts.
“I’m off the committee” if there are deeper cuts to the military, Kyl warned at a forum sponsored by several conservative think tanks, including AEI, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Heritage Foundation.

The supercommittee met for the first time Thursday but made little progress other than giving opening statements and passing its own internal rules.

Kyl, an Arizona Republican, who is speaking for many defense hawks in trying to stave off deep cuts to national security, told the forum Thursday that “my point of view is that defense should not have any more cuts.”

Kyl and others are also deeply worried about the so-called trigger in the debt-limit law passed last month. If the supercommittee fails to reach between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, there will be automatic cuts in defense spending and Medicare.

The trigger was built into the debt-limit deal in order to force serious action from the supercommittee, but Kyl and others are already promising to rewrite the law to water down the trigger if the deficit panel fails to reach a deal by Thanksgiving.

If the “trigger” is pulled, “I would do my best to see to it that it never took effect,” Kyl said.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but Jon Kyl threatening to quit the supercommittee in a huff (or a minute and a huff), this is excellent news, isn't it? Shouldn't someone be trying to persuade him that merely quitting the supercommittee isn't enough, he should quit the Senate, if not this earthly vale of tears altogether?

You have to feel for the senator -- well, just a little. After all, it wasn't that long ago that he could stand tall as a political primitive, confident that there was no one, or hardly anyone, in the Senate of a more knee-merk reactionary bent than his sad self. Now when you look at the kind of right-wing riffraff they're letting in the joint, he must feel like not much more than an ancient dung beetle staggering that last lap to the finish line. (Oh, I don't suppose dung beetles do laps, or have a finish line. So maybe it's not the world's most accurate, let alone elegant, metaphor.)

Still, when it comes to threatening to do his best to prevent laws from taking effect, aren't there some laws on the books to cover the situation? I can't think of a more fitting way for a useless turd like Senator Kyl to crown his career in public life than by dying in prison.


MAY WE GUESS THAT THE PRINCIPAL BUSINESS OF THE
SUPERCOMMITTEE IS BUSINESS -- CAMPAIGN BUSINESS?

Fanfare, please: The supercommittee is now in business, co-chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Aren't these the 12 people you would pick to right the government's budgetary course?

I've lost the link, but this morning I had one to a piece about bonanza-like fund-raising activities of the Super 12, the senators and representatives their respective leaderships deemed their supergiant repositories of budgetary wisdom to solve the impasse that even a less lily-livered manner of congressional Democrats probably couldn't have finessed over the conspiracy of the criminality and cretinousness that now constitutes Your Republican Party.

Meanwhile, as the Christian Science Monitor's Gail Russell Chaddock reported today:

Unlike any other congressional committee, the deficit reduction panel's mandate potentially covers every aspect of federal taxing and spending. That’s why public interest groups – and the protesters evicted from Thursday’s first meeting – are pushing so hard for public access to committee deliberations.

So far, the panel has committed only to Thursday’s public organizing session and a public hearing on Sept. 13 on “the history and drivers of our nation’s debt and its threats.” The co-chairs of the panel, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R) of Texas both noted in their opening statements that many deliberations will be closed to the press and public.

I think it's safe to say that if there's anything the Super 12 don't want to know, we're not going to know it -- unless some enterprising journalistic sleuths are the beneficiaries of hostile leaks, or until people start writing their memoirs.

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