Daily Kos diary of an incredibly candid Kerry letter on the supercommittee

[karynnj]

written in response to a Massachusetts constituent who had written him. It is well worth reading because it explains and expands on the public comments in the Boston Globe article and in various talk shows. It is a very sobering assessment of where we are economically. I would suspect that Kerry wrote this and that he had it sent to all the people who wrote him of their concerns with cutting entitlements.

Thank you for contacting me about the so-called "Supercommittee" on which I served, officially known as the "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction." I appreciate your advocacy and activism on this issue, and in particular because the issues aren't going away even though the Committee couldn't come to an agreement. I hope you will allow me to share my thoughts with you on what happened, why, and where we go from here.

First of all, I'm deeply disappointed with the Committee's outcome. America's debt is a real issue. It hurts our country. This Committee had an historic opportunity to meet an historic moment and do something big, bold, and balanced that demanded shared sacrifice to put our country first. No one should be happy that a balanced agreement wasn't reached. Every day that goes by with this mounting debt, priorities like investing in education, science, technology, and research, are crowded out by interest on the debt.

That said, I still deeply believe that a bad agreement – an unbalanced one – is even worse than no agreement. That's what I believed going into the Committee process, and I believe that even more forcefully today.
<snip>
It didn't have to be this way. Perhaps the awful reality of across the board budget cuts in key priorities will finally sober everyone up. We must spend the next year figuring out how to arrive at a balanced and fair solution for our country. Your continued engagement in these issues and these upcoming debates is vital. Congress still needs to take action to improve our economy over the short-term and make America competitive for the long term.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/20/1047326/-John-Kerry-comment-on-Supercommittee?via=search

This, to me, explains why he wanted to be on what was always seen as a no win committee.

[ladym55]

1. He is like the canary in the coal mine

He keeps jumping up and down yelling at us to stop the stupid and work for the good of the country ... and he is largely ignored.

This particular segment struck me hardest in this letter:

"The bottom line is that no Super Committee could succeed with Grover Norquist as its 13th member. Make no mistake: most Americans have never heard of Grover Norquist, but his interest group's "pledge" to never raise revenue doomed the committee to failure – in fact, when 33 Republican Senators signed a letter vowing to kill any agreement that included new revenue, they effectively created a foregone outcome. I have little appetite for these partisan pledges – the pledge I took as your United States Senator was to our Constitution and our country, not to a lobbyist named Grover Norquist."