Peters' Iron Triangle and the Deficit-Cutting Supercommittee

Peters' uses the illustration of "picket fence federalism" to describe how different policy areas tend to be isolated based on function. His "iron triangle" depicts the different actors involved in policy making for each functional area. One component of his iron triangle is the "committee or subcommittee." He asserts that members of subcommittees have a greater level of expertise on the policy issue at hand and in theory can come up with a more sound decision. Yet, POLITICO recently reported that the new "supercommittee" created by Pelosi to cut 1.5 trillion dollars from the deficit has been struggling to come up with ideas and focusing more on old solutions. Does this bipartisan panel have the expertise and ability to successful solve this policy issue?

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Scott Wong of POLITCO reports on strategy of the supercommittee, "

“It wouldn’t make sense to try to reinvent the wheel,” California Rep. Xavier Becerra, a supercommittee member and the Democratic Caucus vice chairman, told POLITICO.

“We can take a lot of the good work that was done by any of these commissions and groups to give us a set of ideas which we can work off of,” he said. “If we do that, I think that can help us accelerate our time frame.”

While that doesn’t sound terribly ambitious, it does create a pretty familiar road map for the deficit panel: tax code reform, including closing loopholes for special interests and overhauling the big entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Other cuts to domestic programs are also under discussion, though the Defense Department is fighting deep cuts to military programs."