Congress will hand the sticky details to a bipartisan committee of 12

According to the agreement reached yesterday, committee members would have only until the end of November to complete the job, and when they approve a final set of cuts, the rest of Congress would be given a simple choice: take them or leave them.

The first step in the process would take place immediately: raising the debt limit by nearly $1 trillion and cutting spending by a slightly larger amount over a decade.

That would be followed by creation of the super committee to recommend an additional $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security or overhauling the tax code.

Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit, which would be needed by early next year.

If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target or if Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

It sounds simple, but there is a problem with this idea: Similar super committees have been tried before, and they have not always delivered super results. In fact, one of the few things that will make the committee’s job easier is that a lot of the ground has already been covered.

“I know people roll their eyes and say, ‘Oh, another commission. Really?’ ’’ said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, on the Senate floor last week. But she said this one could deliver results: “If we have a finite end date, and have the opportunity to make more real cuts, it is worth another chance.’’

But this may be not so much a chance than another gamble.

“They tend not to work,’’ said Sarah Binder, a historian of Congress at George Washington University.

The problem, Binder said, is that the factors that keep the whole Congress from solving hard problems usually reappear in a smaller committee.

“The same conflict that leads to the creation of these groups,’’ Binder said, “gets replicated in those groups.’’