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Mayor Bloomberg Blasts Obama, Washington For 'Supercommittee' Failure

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork / AP) - The bipartisan leadership of a special congressional deficit supercommittee has officially announced that the panel has failed to reach an agreement.

A 12-member Congressional panel was assigned to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling say that despite "intense deliberations'' the members of the panel have been unable "to bridge the committee's significant differences.''

WCBS 880's Alex Silverman With Bloomberg's Reaction

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg calls it a damning indictment "of Washington's inability to govern this country."

No excuses, he says, when the people who are supposed to be solving this country's problems won't even talk to each other.

He says the greatest threat to our economy is not Europe's instability or China's monetary policy.

"It is the partisan paralysis and political cowardness," said Bloomberg.

1010 WINS' Steve Sandberg reports

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"Markets are coming apart. People have lost their jobs. They can't find work, and in three-and-a-half weeks they couldn't even bother to sit down together," said Bloomberg on Staten Island Monday. "I don't know how you'd reach an agreement if you don't sit down at the table and talk to each other."

His Honor is also pointing the finger toward the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

"It's the chief executive's job to bring people together and to provide leadership in difficult situations, and I don't see that happening," said Bloomberg.

Bloomberg says thousands of jobs that would have been created now won't be, calling that an embarrassment if there ever was one.

The mayor says creating jobs is one of the most important responsibilities of any elected official.

"And in Washington, they just don't seem to get that," he said.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo planned an emergency budget meeting of his top advisers in advance of the supercommittee's admitted failure, according to an administration official.

The state official said New York could lose as many as 155,000 jobs and billions in dollars in aid to schools and health care services because federal budget cuts would tear into state and local jobs funded by Washington.

The state official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said inaction by the supercommittee is a "game changer'' in New York, where Cuomo and the Legislature earlier this year addressed a $10 billion deficit and cut spending.

State tax revenues are expected to be cut deeply once Wall Street reacts to the supercommittee's apparent failure.

The Cuomo administration official said the state Division of Budget is already running "a series of scenarios'' that would account for billions of dollars in federal aid losses.

New York depends on the federal government for nearly $40 billion a year, or about 30 percent of the total state budget. Wall Street revenues including income taxes on lucrative bonuses issued at the end of each year account for about 20 percent of state revenues.

Federal aid is a major component of funding for schools, Medicaid health care programs for the poor and working poor, construction on public projects, and funds more than 670,000 total jobs statewide representing $32 billion in wages, Cuomo said in a letter Friday to New York's congressional delegation.

What do you have to say about the supercommittee's failure? Sound off in the comments section below!

(TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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