"Don't put off for tomorrow for what you can do today." Unfortunately, Congress doesn't live by this adage. They literally had years to resolve the fiscal cliff and our financial mess and in the eleventh hour they came through with a bill that satisfies nobody.
Sure, they approved a bill preventing tax increases and spending cuts. Tax cuts were maintained for individuals earning less than $400,000 per year and couples earning $450,000 per year. Wow.
Had our leaders not acted, the Bush tax cuts would have expired and caused deep tax increases and $110 billion in automatic spending cuts in domestic programs and the military.
What Congress did was play the old shell game. There is absolutely no revenue benefit in raising taxes on 0.6% of the population. Congress thought with their wallets, not ours.
Payroll taxes are still going up. Americans making $30,000 a year will take home $50 less each month. Those making $113,700 will lose $189.50 a month.
Congress still failed to address the $16.4 billion dollar debt ceiling that was reached on Monday. And federal spending cuts that would have gone into effect on Wednesday would have reduced the budgets of most government agencies and programs by eight to ten percent.
Supposedly, if Congress failed to act on the fiscal cliff the economy would have went back into a recession and unemployment would have gone over 9%. Realistically, as long as quality jobs continue to go overseas, our economy will never rebound. Unemployment will increase once the seasonal workers are laid off. It is a never ending cycle that can easily be fixed.
We were better off going over the cliff. It would have shown the world that we are serious in reeling in wasteful federal spending to avoid a financial meltdown that occurs all to often in Europe. Instead, our elected officials chose to live by another adage; "money goes to money while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
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