Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Just 10 days out from the deadline of the super committee to make a deal, news outlets are reporting more reasons to worry that the talks will fall apart — and that congress may try other maneuvers to address the deficit.
As was to be expected after this summer’s debt-deal deadlock, members of the congressional super committee remain hung up on tax and entitlement reform.
Republicans and Democrats are divided by their respective plans, with each offering spending cuts and tax revenue increases. Republicans have offered a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction package with roughly $750 billion in spending cuts over the next decade and a $300 billion tax proposal mostly comprised of deduction eliminations. Democrats have offered to trim $2 trillion, with their proposal calling for an almost equal mix of spending cuts and tax increases. The committee was assigned to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit savings.
The attention has turned to other recourse available to the committee to avoid the “trigger mechanism” — a fail-safe that would result in military and entitlement cuts in the case a deal is not made.
Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the panel’s Republican co-chair, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the super committee members may punt some of the decisions about deficit reduction to individual committees — “a two-step process,” as he described it. In that scenario, the super committee would set the amount of increased tax revenue to be met and individual congressional committees would then draft legislation to meet it.
The Chairmen of the relevant committees — the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee — have said that they would accept that arrangement, according to reporting this morning from the New York Times.
But even if no deal is struck and the “trigger” is pulled, there’s still reason to believe cuts can be avoided.
The trigger’s cuts do not go into effect until January 2013, so congress would have a year to mitigate. It would also “launch a heavy lobbying effort on K Street, where defense firms, in particular, would be eager to prevent automatic cuts,” according to The Hill.
Senator Pat Toomey (D-PA) addressed that issue on “Fox News Sunday,” saying, “in the very, very unfortunate event that we don’t [make a deal] I think it’s very likely that Congress would reconsider the configuration.”
President Obama has told the committee that it needs to “bite the bullet,” and has floated the possibility that he may block any attempt to create a workaround from next week’s Thanksgiving deadline.
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