The fiscal cliff is a completely artificial construct created by lawmakers who knew exactly what they were doing -- putting off difficult choices because they didn't feel like dealing with them at the time
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke makes his way past reporters on Capitol Hill after meeting privately with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and members of the committee about the looming economic crisis, often called the "fiscal cliff", on Capitol Hill in Washington one day last month.
No one can claim to be surprised by the fiscal cliff. We’ve been heading right for it, and everyone knows where, when, why it’s there.
The fiscal cliff is not like some natural formation — the Grand Canyon, say.
The fiscal cliff, which our nation will plunge over at year’s end, is a completely artificial construct. It was created by lawmakers who knew exactly what they were doing – putting off the difficult choices because they didn’t feel like dealing with them at the time.
The fiscal cliff, given its appropriately frightening moniker by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is a combination of budget-busting tax increases and deep spending cuts that will automatically go into effect at the start of 2013. Unless Congress acts, and the president agrees.
No one wants the across-the-board tax increases. And no one wants to see all the spending cuts — half of which will hit the Pentagon – enacted. And virtually everyone agrees that if nothing is done, the nation will quickly sink into another recession.
Which leaves action as the sole course, right?
Unless some in Congress get their backs up.
President Barack Obama has said that he is open to a grand bargain on the fiscal cliff. What this would mean, in effect, is changes in taxes and spending that would not only pull the nation from the precipice, but would also go some way toward lowering our deficit.
Who could argue with that?
Fanatics, that’s who.
If Obama is re-elected, he will almost assuredly find himself working with a Republican-led House. And there are many among the GOP caucus who won’t even talk about taxes. Period. No matter what.
Like petulant teenagers, they just cover their ears and spout nonsense – la la la la la – if the topic is broached. Even when we are racing toward a cliff.