On Jan. 1, our taxes will go up, the budget will be cut and the U.S. economy, we are told, will go over a financial cliff.
On Dec. 21, we are told, the world’s longest calendar will come to an end ... and so, some believe, will mankind.
It’s too bad that our lawmakers have turned balancing the budget into a Beltway version of Armageddon rhetoric. Worst-case scenario, Congress will do nothing and our trillion-dollar deficit will be quickly reduced. The reason this is a worst-case scenario is because this hatchet approach to the budget would most likely hurt our economy and send us back into recession.
Republicans who took a pledge to never raise taxes need to rethink their positions and learn to “never say never.” If they refuse to bargain and nothing is done, we’re all going to see higher taxes. According to an article in the Dec. 10 issue of Time magazine, on Jan. 1, 2013, “Absent a deal, $661 billion worth of new taxes become law,” followed by $1.2 trillion in government-wide spending cuts over nine years. An article on The Wall Street Journal.com, citing a report from the White House, tells us, “Automatic spending reductions set to begin in January would cut $109 billion from the federal budget through Sept. 30, 2013, including broad cuts to the military, food safety and U.S. embassy security.”
Cutting too much, too fast, would indeed be like going over a cliff, when all it takes to smooth out the terrain is make sensible cuts while restoring the tax rates previously paid by our wealthiest Americans back to what they were in the prosperous 1990s.
Cliff or pothole, lawmakers can still fix things after Jan. 1. After all, the world probably isn’t coming to an end.

Susan Thacker