Gingrich: Supercommittee Failure Good for America

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich believes it's good that the congressional supercommittee charged with budget deficit reduction seems destined to fail.

“I think it's going to fail,” Gingrich said at a campaign event at Rivier College in Nashua, N.H., today. “And I think it should fail, because it's exactly wrong.”

The creation of the supercommittee via the debt ceiling agreement between President Barack Obama and Republicans last summer was a bad idea, MSNBC quotes Gingrich as saying.

"It's not that Washington is inherently gridlocked,” he said. “It is that the current players behaving in the current way are inherently gridlocked. It's partially the president's fault, partially Congress's fault, but it's a mess.”

The supercommittee idea is unworkable, Gingrich said. "They were trying to break out of the mess by being, in my judgment, even dumber — that is, creating a committee of 12 picked by the political leadership to magically get in a room to come up with something that 535 couldn't solve. It's profoundly the wrong direction."

Separately, Gingrich said his strong debate performances prove he’s up to the task of challenging Obama. "If you stop and ask yourself, 'It's October of 2012, we get to the debates — who do you want to have debate Obama to draw clarity between the various lies he will be telling and the truth?'” Gingrich said. “I think most people end up thinking I'm a better debater than my friends are.”