West Blames Politics, White House for Supercommittee Failure

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-West Palm Beach, on Monday morning blamed politics and partisanship, primarily from the White House, for the reported pending failure of the congressional supercommittee, officially known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

Over the course of the past two months, including dozens of meetings and hearings, this supercommittee has not been able to agree on a single issue that can help move this country forward. I find it appalling that grown adults cannot sit down at a table and find a way to negotiate something so important to the future of this nation, West stated in a released statement.

President Barack Obama and his administration are to blame for the anticipated failure of the supercommittee. He has stood by and done nothing to encourage bipartisanship among this committee. Instead, the president and this administration would rather sit back and watch automatic cuts kick in that will be devastating to our military -- ripping $600 billion from Defense in 10 years. At a time when America's enemies are more emboldened than ever, our military needs to be supported, not shredded.

I am calling on President Obama to step up and be a leader and introduce legislation that will restore these automatic cuts to our military. We cannot put our country in danger because of partisan antics. The American people are sick and tired of Washington, D.C., and there's good reason why. The failure of this supercommittee is an embarrassment to Congress and to the American people.

White House Spokesman Jay Carney said Monday, during his daily media briefing, that Obama has been engaged since the start of the summer with the leadership in the House.

The president at the beginning of the process, at the beginning of the supercommittee process --a committee established by an act of Congress, put forward a comprehensive proposal that went well beyond the $1.2 trillion mandated by that act, Carney said.That has been available to the committee since it first started meeting, and is available today with the waning hours left to it to act, as a road map to how you achieve the balanced approach that Americans demand.