There wsa NO SUPERCOMMITTEE FAILURE!

Rather it was a huge success.  So argues Investor's Business Daily in today's lead editorial.  They say that the result will be budget deficit redtuction based entirely on spending cuts.  Exit question - when is a 18% INCREASE a cut?

For Supercommittee, Failure Was the Only Option

 Posted 11/21/2011 07:09 PM ET

The Debt Crisis: The "failure" of the supercommittee is better described as a success. Republicans stood firm against new taxes and got what they set out to achieve: deficit reduction that relies 100% on spending cuts.
With the supercommittee's demise, Washington went into finger-pointing mode. Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for not budging on taxes. Mitt Romney blamed President Obama for his lack of leadership. And while Obama hasn't blamed anyone yet, we're pretty sure it won't be himself.
This blame game is woefully misguided. Given the political environment, Republicans were right to hang tough on tax hikes, take the $1.2 trillion in spending reductions, and hope Obama loses the next election so we can finally get serious about our debt crisis.
Consider what "success" would have looked like: a significant boost in taxes today in exchange for virtually meaningless spending "cuts" spread out over a decade. Under this summer's debt ceiling deal, the supercommittee had to find $1.2 trillion in 10-year deficit cuts on top of a first round of $900 billion spending cuts. If not, cuts would automatically be made, split evenly between domestic and defense "discretionary" programs. While $1.2 trillion seems like a lot, it's barely noticeable, given the gargantuan size of the budget. And as the chart shows, there's no cut in spending at all, just continued growth at a slightly reduced rate. It wasn't worth it for the GOP to cave on its pledge not to raise taxes and hand Democrats a significant political victory just to scale back these meager "cuts." It's true that as a result of the supercommittee's failure, the Defense Department is in for a hit, one that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls "devastating." But the cuts don't kick in until next October and would amount to only $33 billion that fiscal year. This would still leave defense with $5 billion more than it had in 2010 and $72 billion more than in 2008. And over the next 10 years, its budget will still climb 18%. Plus, Congress can always adjust that spending if needed.