WHOOPS

Dow Dips on Deficit-Panel Flop

Slides 300 points in early trading.

Not so “super,” after all: staffers on the congressional “supercommittee” spent their final discussions Sunday not hammering out a debt-reduction deal but instead debating how to publicly admit their failure. It’s Congress’s third big failure to strike a deal in the past year, following a bipartisan debt committee and talks between President Obama and John Boehner. Once again, Republicans refused to consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans; they pointed fingers, in turn, at Democrats, who they said dragged their feet on entitlement reform. On Monday, the committee chairs, Senator Patty Murray and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, are expected to issue a joint statement announcing they had not struck a deal.