The media’s incessant and dire warnings notwithstanding, the “fiscal cliff” is no cliff at all. Judging by some of the recent comments posted and a couple of emails I received over the past few days, I think it’s important to make this clear and simple.<\/p>\n
1. The sequester was an abrogation of fiscal responsibility. It was the President’s bad idea but Congress is to blame for going along with it.<\/p>\n
2. There is no mandate to raise taxes. Obama won the popular vote by 3%, yet the Republicans hold an 8% edge in Congressional seats. The truth is that Americans are still deeply divided. Both sides are in the same position in terms of public support when it comes to addressing fiscal issues.<\/p>\n
3. The real fiscal cliff is the $16 trillion in national debt, not the taxes and “mandatory cuts” that would trigger without “a deal,” as these can be countered with spending in other legislation. Entitlements (social security, Medicare, and Medicaid) comprise 2\/3 of the spending, so the cliff will remain until these are reformed, not just tweaked. Cuts in the other 1\/3 of the budget are needed to bring Washington back in line with its limited Constitutional role. Negotiating a sound agreement is a good idea, but the deal must be a good one and we must understand that it will not remove the cliff.<\/p>\n
If you are convinced that the fiscal cliff is all that the media and many politicians are telling you, then consider the following:\u00a0We have been told that the taxes and cuts mandated by the sequester will push the economy over the cliff, yet we have also been also been told that a deal containing the same level of taxes and cuts transferred to different wage earners and programs<\/em> can actually promote economic growth and instill confidence. Transferring tax liabilities from one group of wage earners to another might be good or bad, but the economy doesn’t perform better when high wage earners pay a higher percentage of the same total. This is illogical.<\/p>\n The President and his supporters in the media used the scare tactics when he promoted his $787 billion stimulus package. He won the day and we spend the money, yet the economy has yet to strengthen. Let’s not be fooled again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The media’s incessant and dire warnings notwithstanding, the “fiscal cliff” is no cliff at all. Judging by some of the recent comments posted and a couple of emails I received over the past few days, I think it’s important to make this clear and simple. 1. The sequester was an abrogation of fiscal responsibility. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}