In July 2013, Barcelona, Spain, will, appropriately, be hosting the FINA World Cliff Diving Championships. The powers that be in Washington are hosting their own cliff-diving event right now.
Within just hours of the completion of the electoral count, President Obama and congressional leaders were on the phone extending olive-branch sentiments and commitments to work together to avoid dropping off the “fiscal cliff.”
Everyone knows the sentiments are phony — those who express them, their advisers, the American people and, well, the markets clearly do, too.
The day after the presidential election, the markets sold off hard — about 300 points — which was followed by a 120-point drop.
In Barcelona, cliff diving is a source of national pride. But here in America, it is a source of political stupidity and embarrassment.
Last year we lost our AAA rating as politicos refused to address the debt ceiling until it was too late.
Early on in his presidency, Obama signed an executive order to appoint a very legitimate and intelligent National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, or Simpson-Bowles, for short.
When the 18-member star-studded bipartisan commission returned with suggestions and filed its report, well, that was the end of that. To the commission’s credit, no one fully approved of its suggestions — meaning it got it right.
But true leadership does require going outside of your comfort zone and taking risks.
Instead, after a cataclysmic economic fall and stock market crash just last summer, Congress assigned a “supercommittee” the task of getting the job done. If it doesn’t, $1.2 trillion in mandatory “sequestration” cuts and taxes will kick in — including a massive half-trillion-dollar cut to the military, affecting 325,000 of our finest, and non-defense cuts that will affect another 400,000 American jobs.
In addition, there will be massive tax hikes, resulting in less take-home pay, and huge cuts to Medicare.
In all, the effects of our self-induced crash landing could push us into a nasty recession.
So hold on tight, America. We’re close to going off our enormous fiscal cliff, unless they think of something — very quickly.