The Supercommittee Deadlines

November 18*
Writing Legislation

November 21**
Scoring the Savings

November 23 Deadline
Three likely outcomes

PASS
Pass general legislation that will include instructions for other committees

PUNT
Extended Deadline

FAIL
Sequestration***

Congressional Committees will then be responsible for tax and health care legislation

Congress can amend the Budget Control Act to extend the deadline, but is highly unlikely to do so with the time left before November 23rd.

The actual process of sequestration will not begin until January of 2013

* Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Deadline: Despite contrary testimony from Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), numerous sources have reported that the CBO needs less than a week to score proposed legislation. However, if large-scale deficit reduction legislation is going to be passed, the legislation must be presented on Monday, November 21st, meaning that the OLC must reasonably receive the proposal by Friday, November 18th in order to write it into legislative language. This deadline is not official ** CBO and Public Presentation Deadline: The Budget Control Act prohibits the Supercommittee from voting on a plan that has not been made available to the public and to the Congressional Budget Office for 48 hours before the vote. This means that by midnight on the 21st of November, the existing plan must be made public. *** Sequestration Sequestration will occur if the Supercommittee is unable to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in savings over the next ten years. Sequestration will eliminate up to $1.2 trillion in funding in defense and nondefense spending, but cannot cut Social Security, Veterans programs, Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs for the poor, with Medicare cuts limited to 2%. The CBO estimates that Defense will be cut 10%, Non-defense spending will be cut 7.5%, and Medicare provider cuts will total $123 billion over 9 years. Washington Strategic Consulting www.wscdc.com