Debt Panel Likely to Fail: ; Supercommittee Remains Divided As Deadline Approaches

Summary

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WASHINGTON - A special deficit-reduction supercommittee appears likely to admit failure today, unable or unwilling to compromise on a mix of spending cuts and tax increases required to meet its assignment of saving taxpayers at least $1.2 trillion over the coming decade.

The panel is sputtering to a close after two months of talks in which they were never able to get close to bridging a fundamental divide over how much to raise taxes to address a budget deficit that forced the government to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spent last year.

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Extract

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Debt Panel Likely to Fail: ; Supercommittee Remains Divided As Deadline Approaches

Members of the bipartisan panel, formed during the summer crisis over raising the government's borrowing limit, spent their time on Sunday in testy performances on television talk shows, blaming each other for the impasse.

In a series of television interviews, not a single panelist seemed optimistic about a...

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