Robert Reich On Understanding The Fiscal Curb, Ah, Cliff

The Fiscal Curb

Reich gives us eight principles for Democrats and other progressives in approaching the "fiscal curb." (I saw that term on a comment thread earlier today and ROTFLMAO, but couldn't find it again to give credit now.) The one I would emphasize most of all is #2: No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal.

The "cliff" is publicized by the wealthy architects of the economic situation that got us into this mess, and to put it bluntly, there is no cliff: allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on 1/1, simultaneously allowing the expiration of many expenditures as agreed to by Congress in the last failed debt limit blackmail battle, will leave the wealthy paying their fair share and put strong pressure on Republicans to reinstate tax cuts for lower- and middle-income Americans (but ONLY for them) or else pay the political price in 2014.

The GOP came out of the 2012 elections a seriously damaged party. If, after the drubbing they took (despite spending unfathomable amounts of money to buy the election), they insist on continuing to argue for a society with a great gap between the obscenely rich and everyone else, maybe in a couple of years we can put them out of their misery. Wishful thinking on my part, I know, but I believe it's been renamed "the audacity of hope."