Welcome to the Party, Superdupercommittee!
Supercommittes need not apply. This is a job for the superdupercommittee.
This year’s intractable debt and shutdown fight requires a faster, stronger, newer supercommittee, according to House Republican leaders. Supercommittee simply won’t do. It needs a new name.
This isn’t just the opinion of HOH. Indeed, as soon as the news broke Tuesday that the House GOP would call for a bipartisan, bicameral committee to iron out differences, what was previously a joke around town — “Why don’t they create a supercommittee? Ha!” — became a legislative proposal.
Our first inkling that the word supercommittee wouldn’t do came from House Republican aides, who begged —and we mean begged — reporters not to use the word when referring to the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth.
To that, HOH says: No problem. To make sure our readers know we’re not referring to the 2011 Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction when we’re writing about the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth, from here on out, we’ll refer to this year’s group as the superdupercommittee.
As Speaker John A. Boehner would say: “This isn’t some damn game.” It’s a naming party!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bPj_TpztYk
While HOH is at it, we’d like to provide our own list of incentives for the superdupercommittee to deliver on its promise, whatever that turns out to be. For the supercommittee, the threat of sequester that has led to government furloughs and has wreaked havoc on federal agencies obviously wasn’t enough to avert failure. For the superdupercommittee, we’ll need to get more creative.
So here are HOH’s initial list of punishments for the superdupercommittee for failure. And no, as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chided HOH pal Todd Zwillich a couple of weeks back, we’re not presuming failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-jC19u9A3Y
That’s why we have the following, um, inducements for the superdupercommittee to deliver. To make members more personally involved in their work, we propose that the results apply only to members of the committee. The country’s suffered enough.
- Superdupercommittee members would be obligated to be guests on the new “Crossfire” for all of 2014.
- Superdupercommittee members would not be able to accept any campaign funding for all of 2014.
- Superdupercommittee members would be forced to watch “Weekend at Bernie’s 2” and “Battlefield Earth” and write a critical essay about the two films’ influence on “The Family Circus” comic strip.
- Superdupercommittee members would assume live-tweeting of the Constitution duties from Team Issa for Constitution Day 2014.
- Superdupercommittee members would be responsible for finding a vegan lunch on Capitol grounds each day of 2014, and would need to file a quarterly report to the Vegetarian Caucus and Restaurant Associates on their quest.
- Superdupercommittee members would become interns for the HOH team for all of 2014.
Got a creative way to inspire the superdupercommittee? Drop us a line.