BRIGHT SIDE

Supercommittee Flop May Trim Debt

If Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire.

The supercommittee may have been a super failure, but there may be some good news to come out of the dead debt talks: a sharp drop in annual federal deficits. On Monday, the debt panel announced it would not be able to make $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years. Now, per an earlier agreement in Congress, spending cuts will kick in automaticaly, with at least half coming from defense spending in 2013. Plus, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2012. Together, the new cuts and taxes would cut the annual deficit by half. President Obama has blamed the GOP for the failure of the talks and said he’ll veto anything that aims to roll back the automatic cuts.