Want to make sure your calendar is clear when we hit the debt ceiling? Then don’t schedule anything between Feb. 15 and March 1.
Every election year, they become the popular ones, the celebrities with the power to hire or fire politicians. Then, when actual governing begins, they become the forgotten ones – jilted wallflowers watching as the leaders they elected are devoured into a political system dominated by extremes.
The eleventh-hour compromise that avoided the fiscal cliff cannot be repeated when it comes time to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, top lawmakers agreed Sunday.
Now that the House has passed a Senate deal to avert the fiscal cliff, it will become law when President Obama signs it. He has returned to Hawaii to join his family on vacation.
The fiscal bill passed by Congress solves an immediate dilemma, averting income-tax increases for most Americans while taxing top-earners more, yet leaves unanswered a longer-term question of taming the federal debt.
After briefly pumping the brakes, House Republicans were poised Tuesday night to pass the deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” despite deep misgivings about hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending included in the compromise foisted on them by Senate Republicans and the White House.
A long line of America’s top chief executives have rotated through Washington in recent weeks, loudly urging lawmakers and the White House to reach a broad deal to fix the budget. They once sounded optimistic. Now many of them aren’t talking, and if they are, they’re gloomy.
Buried within the mass of tax and spending provisions known as the fiscal cliff is a problem that could cause grief for taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service.
A new poll finds the public’s fears over the looming “fiscal cliff” growing, as the year-end deadline for a deficit deal nears.
The federal budget deficit was $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013, $57 billion more than the shortfall recorded in October and November of last year, CBO estimates in its latest Monthly Budget Review. Revenues rose by $30 billion, or 10 percent, but outlays increased by $87 billion, or 16 percent.
Strengthening of America—Our Children’s Future, a bipartisan initiative cochaired by former senators Sam Nunn, Pete Domenici, Evan Bayh, and the late Warren Rudman to raise public consciousness of the country’s growing debt, has released a new report: “Achieving a Sustainable Fiscal Path: A Bipartisan Effort to Address the Nation’s Rising Debt.”
While avoiding the “fiscal cliff” is essential to near-term recovery and job growth, it is just the first step to restoring sustained prosperity in America. It would be catastrophic if negotiations between the president and Congress succeeded in avoiding the cliff but failed to address the fundamental threat of projected debt rising faster than the economy can grow.