convened over the last 20 years to try to deal with the deficit and the debt ranging from the danforth kerry commission in the 90s to the fiscal commission last year in the sense that those commissions were an attempt to outsource the solution to the deficit problem and the blue ribbon panel would supposedly come up with a plan and congress would pass it but that never happened. the way i'd think of this is congress is going to reinforce the solution to a group of its own members and its own sitting members and instead of outsourcing it they will create a procedural structure that will attempt to force action in the new committee and facilitate passage of the bill by an up or down vote in the house and senate. those are the key parts of what the supercommittee is all about. the means of forcing action. this is point number five. the automatic spending cuts that would kick in starting in 2013. the cuts would be $1.2 trillion over the next decade if there is no supercommittee bill at all. if there is a supercommittee bill acted and designed by the president that gives some distance to that tha