The Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Rosalind S. Helderman finally come clean. "If the congressional 'supercommittee' cannot agree on a plan to tame the federal debt by next week’s deadline, as now appears likely," they write, "here’s what will happen: nothing."
They still won't explain why the Republicans' proposed tax hike is actually a tax cut, and the story quotes Sen. Max Baucus, D.-Montana, at length about what a tragedy it is that Democrats are unwilling to capitulate, er, I mean compromise. They also quote Sen. Dick Durbin, D.-Illinois, making the more plausible case that it's a shame the super committee won't do anything to create jobs (a point also made by TNR's Jon Cohn). My own view is that yes, it's a shame, but I never really believed the super committee was going to do anything about jobs.
Still, it's nice to see a major metropolitan daily accept reality. Now if they'll only pull the plug on that silly doomsday clock on their homepage.