Super Committee Failure

We face, today, our own hard and inescapable facts that call into question what the most important pursuits of America's responsibility and purpose at home and abroad really are. Guns to kill people in other countries or butter to save people in our own?

Imagine if you could identify a small number of patients who end up eating up most health care dollars. Let's say you could focus resources just on them, while also cutting the overall amount of health care spending dramatically. This isn't fiction, it comes from Camden, New Jersey.

Despite an occasional burst of optimism from quarters that were not involved in the negotiations, it is fair to say that both sides were anticipating that the committee would fail to come up with anything that resembles a budget deal.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said the congressional supercommittee's failure Monday to come to an agreement on spending reforms was "good news" because...

WASHINGTON -- Throughout the super committee's deliberations, impending "automatic, across-the-board cuts" were routinely cited as a driving motivatio...