Thank you for contacting me about the so-called "Supercommittee" on which I served, officially known as the "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction." I appreciate your advocacy and activism on this issue, and in particular because the issues aren't going away even though the Committee couldn't come to an agreement. I hope you will allow me to share my thoughts with you on what happened, why, and where we go from here.

First of all, I'm deeply disappointed with the Committee's outcome. America's debt is a real issue. It hurts our country. This Committee had an historic opportunity to meet an historic moment and do something big, bold, and balanced that demanded shared sacrifice to put our country first. No one should be happy that a balanced agreement wasn't reached. Every day that goes by with this mounting debt, priorities like investing in education, science, technology, and research, are crowded out by interest on the debt.

That said, I still deeply believe that a bad agreement – an unbalanced one – is even worse than no agreement. That's what I believed going into the Committee process, and I believe that even more forcefully today.
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It didn't have to be this way. Perhaps the awful reality of across the board budget cuts in key priorities will finally sober everyone up. We must spend the next year figuring out how to arrive at a balanced and fair solution for our country. Your continued engagement in these issues and these upcoming debates is vital. Congress still needs to take action to improve our economy over the short-term and make America competitive for the long term.