Super Committee will hold Public Meeting on Discretionary Spending

According to Senator Max Baucus, the Super Committee will be holding at least one public meeting and it will address discretionary spending. Also, that no final decisions will be made behind closed doors.

From USA Today --

The joint deficit reduction congressional committee will hold one, maybe two, public meetings next week, and no decisions are being made behind closed doors, Sen. Max Baucus, a member of the committee, said Wednesday.

The Montana Democrat said the first meeting will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday and will cover discretionary spending, those parts of the federal budget that are not mandated, such as Medicare and Social Security.

The meetings have been closed thus far to prevent interest groups from influencing members, he said.

"We're really going to keep all of this to ourselves. Once a proposal gets up to the public domain interest groups will jump all over it -- it makes things difficult," Baucus said.

No votes or final decisions will be made behind closed doors, said Baucus, who promised to open up Congress when first elected to the U.S. House in 1974.

"There were decisions made by members of the House and Senate in that Congress that were made not in public and that's wrong. This is different. All votes and all decisions will be made in public," Baucus said.

While it is good they are negotiating privately to keep the discussions focused, that no public input has been taken to formulate their 'great compromise' is suspect.  It smells more like the typical "we know what's best" elite establishment attitude of D.C.

Newt Gingrich offers up probably the best description on the Super Committee...

"If you want to understand how totally broken Washington is, look at this entire model of a [deficit] supercommitte, which has now got a magic number to achieve and if it doesn't achieve the magic number then we'll all have to shoot ourselves in the head. So when they come back with a dumb idea to merely cut off our right leg, we will all be grateful that they are only semi-stupid instead of being totally stupid." – Newt Gingrich

Most likely we will see a "plan" that is fiscally unappetizing to most and then, like the debt ceiling / default fraud, we will be told we must take it or we face imminent doom.