Fiscal Cliff Watching Thread (There may be spoilers) (Page 2)

At this point I say let go over the cliff. I am not rich and will never be but this idiocy of hiking taxes on a small group of people and
continuing to spend is just plain nuts. Buckle up I have told my Rep to take us over.

They needed to start doing that a long time ago!

Zero Hedge had a pretty good analogy of this being like your kids charging $10'000 in new clothes on your credit card but justifying it by saying they saved you $50'000 on a new car they didn't buy.

Sell the fools  rally. 

Leftist, looney-liberal BFD here...

Mixed feelings about the "agreement":

1. I'm glad my taxes won't be going up this year.
   .
2. I am sorely disappointed that the "agreement" only involves mainly letting taxes go up on the top 2% with no spending cuts.  The entire idea of the sequestration was to force themselves to address spending cuts to lower the deficit.  They took the "cowards approach" to cimply kick it down the road.  As it stands, adding trillions to the deficit isn't what ANYONE should want, including liberals and Democrats.  I honestly believe the Congress is simply politically lazy and won't tackle anything difficult.  The tax-rate revenue side was fairly simple, "What's the limit of income by which rates go up, $250k, $400k, $450k?".  The spending cuts are a much more difficult (and NECESSARY) discussion, and they simply chose to procrastinate on it.

So the timeline is essentially:

1. Try to reach an agreement on how to reduce spending and increase revenue to lower the deficit - FAILED.
2. Create the threat of sequestration to put in such a scare to force an agreement on how to reduce spending and increase revenue to lower the deficit - FAILED.
3. Sequestration deadline approaches, last chance to reach an agreement on how to reduce spending and increase revenue to lower the deficit - INCREASE SOME REVENUE, PROCRASTINATE CUT AGREEMENT FOR SEVERAL MONTHS TO A NEW DEADLINE.

I just wrote up annual reviews for the 8 people who work for me and to be honest, this type of behavior and attitude would warrant a clear "does not meet expectations" rating which is essentially a career-killing, "get your resume in order", I'm going to fire you soon.

I believe I may be at a point of simply never voting for a current incumbant, Democrat or Republican.  My little part to simply "clean house" and replace them all.

Just now able to read some stuff on "the deal".  As I suspected I'm a bit disappointed.  No cuts on anything, so just spend away.......  I was hoping to pay a good bit more taxes this year, too.

If I understand correctly they are supposed to revisit in 2 months?  So I guess we have that going for us.......

It's all about re-election. I saw some reports that said that if they didn't avert the cliff, the defense department was going to be laying off 1,000,000 people. It would be hard to get re-elected with that hanging over your head, since most people think that going over the cliff would have been their fault.

The truly pathetic thing in all of this? We are now over the debt limit. So we just fixed the cliff and today we have to fix the debt limit. Pathetic. I wouldn't allow any of these low life's to work as a cart pusher if it were up to me.

I actually feel bad for the wealthy conservatives (some here included) who made the statement, "I wouldn't mind paying more in taxes IF there were spending cuts to show that my addiational taxes were being used to lower the deficit to help the country as a whole."

I agreed that was fair...  And the politicians simply skrewed them royally.  The deal as it stands now is to raise their taxes to spend more and raise the deficit!  Even as a liberal, I find that quite offensive.

I don't blame those who voted "yes" - They had to avoid the market crash and economic downturn if they reached no agreement whatsoever.

I don't blame those who voted "no" - It's a pathetic agreement that does next to nothing to actually solve the problem at hand.

I do blame them ALL for being cowards and putting their own political interests ahead of progress and simply procrastinating on the issue.

As was said... doing nothing would have been a much better resolution. I simply do not believe all the "end of the world" predictions... the tax rates have been there before, and so has the spending level... it wasn't even going to fix our lack of revenue and out of control spending... not even close... not even a dent... so no, the was "business as usual", not what was good for the country.

Definitely interesting how that all played out.

It really irks me that no one in Washington seems to want to help with a long term fix to the US debt problem.  If these guys were running a business called the USA they all would have been fired by now...because a business can't operate like this.  Does anyone else feel like they just don't care because it isn't their personal finances on the chopping block?  I mean, a CEO or a small business owner is motivated to keep the books balanced because their own financial well-being is tied to it.  But Congress gets paid whether we are in debt or not.  So they aren't motivated to fix it.

We need to raise taxes...on more than just the rich.  Spending cuts won't be enough.  If we do it slowly enough people won't even really feel it.  I'd like to see a plan put out there to slowly raise taxes over the next decade...not so much at one time that we fall back into recession, but just enough that as we climb out of recession we are slowly working towards making more than we spend.

The other thing I find ridiculous during this whole fiscal cliff nonsense is everyone complaining that their paycheck will be smaller because the payroll tax cut expired.  Um, for real, people?  YOU KNEW THAT WAS TEMPORARY!  Stupid f'ing entitled Americans...give them some extra money and how quickly they forget that the money train can't keep on rolling all the time...so they complain when you take away their temporary bonus.  *sigh*

Yep, until everyone has some skin in the game all of the whining about "class-warfare", etc. is just noise.  Everyone, from the top down, will have to sacrifice something in order to fix our budget issues.  So now it looks like the "top" is in the game......everyone else should get ready to play as well.

I was listening to a commentator on the radio who summed it up this way.  America needs to decide what kind of Federal Government it wants to have.  If we want to have a European style government with entitlements for everyone then we need to raise EVERYONES taxes (a lot) to pay for it.  If we want to have a conservative, small government, with low taxes and power to the states then we need to cut spending and programs to make that happen.

What we have today is the European style government entitlements with the taxing of a conservative smaller government.  This will not work, and the politicians are trying to get the best of both worlds, and unfortunately we're redistributing the income of our kids and grandkids to pay for it all.  Heck with class warfare, we're in full on generational warfare.

Also, I bet if everyone had to pay for all the entitlements, then there would be a lot less support for them.

Hey, do you want a new mustang for free?  um, sure I'll take it.
Hey, do you want a new mustang for $500/mo.?  Um, no I can't afford that.

I honestly think society just naturally moves to a huge overbearing central government. Our Founders warned against it, and set out to limit Federal power. The People have voluntarily given it back every since. I'm not ranting...if that is what the people want...

I wish I knew a little more about where the "state" fit into the Founder's plan. Seems to me it was "supposed" to be that the states would manage themselves like small countries with sovereignty... and the Federal government was just supposed to take care of what was laid out in the Constitution... and of course the States could not trump that. And no,this isn't a state's rights rant either.

I do not know how it could be better.... Maybe not a "limited" Federal government... but more of a decentralized Federal Government. That states took on more financial responsibilities, but pooled with other states. It just seems the snowball in Washington is moving too fast and we no longer have control  and there is no stopping it. I'm OK with certain social protection and services, but I do not think it was supposed to be like this. And no, I do not see the "European Model" as a shinning beacon of freedom and efficiency.

Can anyone articulate a good argument that we haven't already gone off the "fiscal cliff"? 

...Because I can't and I haven't heard one.

Good point... when nobody in DC is willing to lift a finger to hit the brakes... I guess you have your answer.

I seriously wonder what the idiots in Washington are thinking.  Our revenues have been around $3T per year for the last 15+ years through booms and recessions, so no matter what the economy does I don't see that number changing much in the near or distant future.

However, we have jacked up our spending so high that we're running a $1T+ deficit every year and we continue to add more spending on top of that.  Add in the $84T in unfunded liabilities and it gets even better.

This isn't a Republican or a Democrat thing because they're both just as bad, but seriously how do they plan to get out of this?  At some point the economy is going to horribly melt down.  I'm talking Chernobyl style melt down.

Excellent post, very well articulated.

I think that the people/politicians have basically word raped what our founding fathers had intended. Most of this through the commerce clause.

Both parties D&R care little about the country and more about themselves and their party, it's about power for them. We are but an audience in their theater. I see no turning back only a collapse when we are without the ability to borrow more money.

Edited to correct typos.

The true problem is the American people.  Yeah - I said it!  Obviously the Congress is willing to try and give everything for nothing.  Even a "fiscal cliff" isn't enough to scare them into action.  So why is it the America peoples' fault?  Because they keep re-electing the same people into office year after year after year.  90%+ reelection of incumbants!

I understand the mentality behind the "Tea Party", but their approach IMHO is simply wrong.  "Say no.  Hold the one-sided line at all costs.  Abandon pragmatism."

Congress makes their own rules, so of course they're unwilling to change anything that would threaten their current power and jobs.  But I guess the big question is how we seperate the political desire to appease (voters, lobbyists, financial backers) to continually get reelected from the willingness to do what is right for the country?

I think the first big step is trying to get money out of politics. You could public fund elections.  Try to take out the paybacks and do what is right.