Rep. Steve King (R-IA), a key conservative Member of the House of Representatives warned the Republican leadership should be prepared for a defeat of the super committee deficit reduction proposals in either the House or Senate.
The deficit reduction committee was appointed by congressional leaders as part of a debt reduction deal with the White House last summer. They must decide on a deficit reduction plan by November 23 or $1.2 Trillion in spending cuts go into effect.
“I think the odds are very high that if the super committee produces a recommendation that it’s likely to fail in the House or Senate, or both,” he told PJ Media today.
King is a major conservative voice in Iowa where the first Presidential caucus will be held.
Rep. King told PJ Tatler:”You have twelve people, I call them the ‘Twelve Apostles’,” he said. “They put them in a room and closed the door. What you do is eliminate the input that comes from everybody else.”
As a result he warns that the House and Senate leadership “should be prepared for a defeat eventuality.”
Castigating the secrecy of the panel, he told PJ Media, “It cuts out the wisdom from the American people for the most part and almost guaranteed to produce weaker result than we might have had open dialogue on the subject.”
King compared the super committee’s closed door negotiations to the doomed 1993 Hillarycare effort in which then First Lady Hillary Clinton attempted to secure passage of a health care bill.
At the time of Hillarycare, he said “The people rose up and resented it and eventually they had to open their meetings up. I don’t expect that will happen with the super committee but I don’t expect there will be a good result that will come from that.”
“They are not building any stakeholders behind this,” he said. “There needs to be some buy-in along the way.”
King said he received little hint from the House members of the panel what they are contemplating “When on a rare occasion a run into a super committee member when you’re in a place where you can actually talk to them, they give you the most general answer. That’s how it’s been for me for the last six weeks or so.”
President Obama, meanwhile has been on the sidelines throughout the super committee’s deliberations.
King says the Democrats have been hoping the panel will fail so they can use it in the 2012 election campaign. “The Democrats have designed it to fail. They’ve wanted it to fail, then blame Republicans.”
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