Clyburn: GOP can end gridlock

COLUMBIA — Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn told a South Carolina rotary club today that even though the “super committee” failed to make long-term spending cuts, Congress still has time to act.

Clyburn said the powerful 12-member congressional cost-cutting committee that he participated in always had a 13th member: Grover Norquist and his no-tax pledge signed by most Republican congressmen. The GOP walked away from the table, Clyburn said, and abandoned the committee’s mission to avoid $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over the next decade.

“Every time we got close to doing it one way, he would pay a visit,” Clyburn said of Norquist. “When (the GOP) took the position that closing tax loopholes would be tantamount to raising taxes, I knew then that the whole deal was doomed. You’re not going to be able to reach an agreement with that kind of irrationality.”

Congress still has the ability to avoid the automatic cuts by voting for a plan before 2013 that will create a reduction in spending with a package of cuts and new ways to collect cash for the government, he said. Any impact on South Carolina is not yet known, Clyburn said.

Clyburn’s comments came about an hour before he was due to fly out of Columbia for Washington for a vote later today on whether to extend payroll tax cuts. Clyburn is South Carolina’s 6th District representative, whose district stretches from Columbia to Charleston.

Republican 1st District Rep. Tim Scott said he grew up in a household that survived on less than $8 an hour and the middle class is not an abstract entity to him. His motivation for budget and spending debates is what’s best for them and what’s fiscally responsible.

President Barack Obama, however, is more interested in campaigning and the Democrats in Congress have spent recent efforts more focused on politicking than much else, Scott said.

Read more in Tuesday’s editions of The Post and Courier.