How Can This Be?

How is it, then, that when they lowered the United States' credit rating, and when the deficit ceiling was the crisis, we could see something had to be done about the national deficit, and we set a Congressional committee to work, and they came back unable to agree, other than to say, "If we don't come to an agreement by March 2013, then these cuts will automatically take place," and, then, when March 2013 rolled around, we said, "Wait, this is too much." Never mind that the cuts were not reductions in overall spending, but just reductions in how fast our spending was increasing. We are not even reducing our spending, just reducing the rate at which our spending is increasing. If we can not even curb our rate of increase, what hope have we of ever dealing with the national deficit?