And we are going to be stuck with whatever that committee decides for the foreseeable future. Unlike other technologies, CSS is not subject to market forces. Even if you, I, Microsoft, or anyone else came up with a better standard, it would have to gain approval from every browser out there, and the compatibility issues would be horrific.
HTML5 is an attempt to try and fix some of the shortcomings of HTML and CSS, but like its predecessors, it will not be perfect. But just because some tags are deprecated in the standard, that doesn’t mean that browsers won’t continue to render them. Sure you take a chance that they won’t render in all browsers, but that’s the price to pay for the convenience of ignoring the “better” way to code a page.