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The Super Committee's official deadline for a deficit deal is technically on Wednesday, but because of the necessary behind-the-scenes work at the Congressional Budget Office, the real deadline is Monday at midnight. Through the weekend, CBO officials were working extended hours to prepare the non-partisan agency to score any type of last-minute deal between Democrats and Republicans be it $1.2 trillion proposal or something akin to the $643 billion offer floated by Republicans on Friday. But all of that effort looks like it's all for naught as the Democratic and Republican co-chairs are looking to draft a joint statement declaring defeat.
The 2011 Budget Control Act that created the Super Committee required any proposal to be scored by the CBO and made public 48 hours ahead of a final vote. As the committee's Republican co-chair Jeb Hensarling said on Fox News Sunday, that gives the committee 15 hours from now to act. "It has to be estimated by the Congressional Budget Office by the end of Monday. So, it's a daunting challenge, no doubt about it."
You know what's also daunting? Scoring a proposal ranging from billions of dollars to trillions of dollars between Monday night and Wednesday morning. To get a sense of this last-minute scoring process, we spoke with two officials at the CBO about what goes into calculating a proposal of this magnitude. Here's the minute-by-minute workflow: