Leadership unwilling to make spending cuts

"How much are we willing to sacrifice," we asked a year ago, Nov. 11, 2010.

We now have the answer. Not much.

The result is likely to be business as usual, except that the business is more likely to be further decline in the U.S. credit rating and, as a result, influence around the world.

A year ago, we were talking about recommendations by President Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles, a Democrat and former Clinton White House chief of staff, and Alan Simpson, a Republican and former senator from Wyoming, which proposed a deficit reduction plan that "would give nearly everyone a chance to contribute to the future fiscal health of the United States."

The plan would cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade by gradually increasing the Social Security retirement age and cutting payments, cutting the Defense Department by eliminating or reducing weapons purchases, eliminating earmarks, freezing salaries and cutting the federal workforce by replacing fewer employees.

It would attach $3 in spending cuts to every $1 in tax increases.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction had a far less ambitious goal, but was expected to give up today without reaching an agreement to cut $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, triggering an automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts to defense and domestic programs.

To be fair, the bipartisan fiscal commission was made up of politicians who no longer have to answer to the voters.

And, since one Congress can undo action by a previous Congress, there's no guarantee the "automatic" cuts will actually kick in.

But unless leadership and will comes forward to put America's financial house in order, the brutal laws of economics will do the job for us.