Source: BobWoodward.com
Bob Woodward has proferred an interesting idea—elected official should delegate greater responsibility for crafting a budget deal. He points out that congressional staff were awfully close to a deal in October 2011 that raised revenues and cut spending. Woodward writes,
Some staffers were ready to break out the champagne. They had a pipeline straight to the leadership in both parties. But the members of the supercommittee did not trust each other. Instead of adopting the staff agreement or a version of it, they decided to go big and craft a deficit-reduction package of up to $3 trillion.
That grand bargain never happened. Political differences were too large.
Politics is the art of the possible. Edward C. Banfield long ago pointed out that the role of the politician is to broker among competing interests. Today’s unprecedented amount of media attention that is given to everything an elected official says or does makes it difficult for politicians to hash things out behind closed doors. Hence, Woodward advocates in this instance that politicians back off and let anonymous staffers do the work of negotiating.
Once they reach an agreement, Woodward does not say what would happen next to prevent politics from deep-sixing the deal. The agreement would have to be drafted into legislation and then acted upon by both chambers of Congress. Perhaps in a subsequent column, Woodward will explain how these complex steps should proceed. Read more at http://goo.gl/1Y5gk