Senators unsure on super committee's success
Under the new debt law, a so-called super committee of Congress is to identify more than a trillion dollars in budget cuts by November. Washington, of course, is littered with the wreckage of past deficit committees that went nowhere. What are the prospects this time?
No politicians on Capitol Hill know more about the budget deficit and how to solve it than Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). They were among six senators who tried to forge a deal before the president and the congressional leadership took over the negotiations. CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley asked them what they thought of the new super committee that will take over the debate now. A transcript follows.
Chambliss: I think it's going to be very difficult for this select committee to come up with any resolution, any meaningful resolution. I don't think the recipe is there for anything but deadlock.
Warner: I'm not sure the committee is going to get the job done. I voted for this very imperfect solution because at least it got us through the debt ceiling.
Pelley: Sen. Chambliss, you are one of most conservative members of the Senate. The president came out today as soon as the bill passed the Senate and said there has to be tax increases. What do you make of that?
Chambliss: There won't be tax increases. They won't consider and I don't think they should.
Pelley: But how can a joint committee accomplish what the president himself and the leadership of the House and Senate were unable to accomplish?
Warner: I think there is enormous bipartisan support from the American people who haven't been very happy with what we've done. I've been embarrassed by being a member of Congress over the last few weeks with everybody finger-pointing instead of trying to find solutions.
Pelley: Sen. Chambliss, you've been here for a while. What's gone wrong? What's different right now?
Chambliss: Too often I think people tend to listen to outside forces who are single-minded or single-focused, rather on than the 600,000 people that sent them there or in my case the 10 million people who sent me here.
Warner: It's kind of like the famous Winston Churchill quote -- you can always count on America to do the right thing after they've tried everything else. Well, we pretty much tried everything else. Now we have to get down to the business of doing the right thing.
