What is the "fiscal cliff"?

[Mikey j]

[Judge Andrew]

The end of the Obama Hallo

[Jim]

Boener’s only plan is to eliminate Social Security and Medicare and tax deductions for the middle class. This allows for the complete elimination of taxes for billionaires and multi-millionaires.
That means all the temporary tax cuts will expire.

[FLSwampBoy]

Here you go:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+Is+The+Fiscal+Cliff

[Rocky]

It is something that Obama created to get political gain.

[Matt]

What Obama will throw us off of

[Steve]

From what I have observed, here's an opinion I agree with :

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20121...010/news06

[Really?]

A slope where the dictatorship of Tea Party Congress is slapped.

Spending? Cut the Big Oil subsidies for the Koch Brothers for one.

GOP Tea PArty just wants to suck every single tax dollar to them. A few thousand people dying is good for them.

democracy does not mean the Tea Party fascism gets it's way

[Nathan]

nobody knows

[Thomas F]

OK, you must understand the history of it all. In the 1950s,60s, and 70s, our income tax had ~12 levels of taxation, rising gradually to ~85% for the top rate. But there were literally thousands of tax loopholes and tax shelters on the books, so that NOBODY ever paid the top rate. Everyone instead was able to find some sort of tax shelter to place their income, such as starting an ostrich & emu farm for instance. Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and he proceeded to state that this situation was stupid, since everyone was channeling their income into stupid things just so they could avoid taxes. How many emu farms do we really need, anyway? So he created "The Reagan Tax Revolution" which wiped out essentially nearly all deductions for loopholes and tax shelters, and taxed the highest earners at only ~26 % instead of the previous ~85% that nobody paid. Afterward, our economy BOOMED, with the largest peacetime economic expansion ever recorded. Look at the Dow-Jones stock market curve if you don't believe me.
Then Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and he said, "We need to expand government and cut the deficit at the same time." What is the best way to do this? He passed the "largest tax increase in US history", and with these revenues he succeeded in balancing the budget but at the same time, choked the growth out of the economy. Clinton's tax increase raised the top rate to ~39.6%, but also increased the middle tax rates as well, putting quite a tax burden upon the middle class.
George Bush was then elected, and his idea was to cut the income tax rates back to more reasonable levels, although not as low as the original Reagan rates. He also decided to get us into two wars at the same time. Even so, the tax money collected by the IRS was at an all time high in 2007, his second to last year in office. However, Democrats insisted that the "Bush tax cuts" be only "temporary", with Congress continuing to pass extensions of them over and over again. The current extension expires on January 1st, 2013, returning us to the previous Clinton tax rates. We also have a 2% "temporary" reduction in the FICA witholding for individuals that also expires on Jan 1st, 2013. And to top it off, we have enormous military spending cuts scheduled to go into effect on January 1st, 2013 unless something else is legislated in its place before the deadline.
So to summarize, the fiscal cliff is as follows:
1)The Bush income tax breaks will expire, returning us to Clinton's tax rates.
2)The 2% FICA reduction will expire.
3) A massive cut in the Defense budget will ensue, as well as lesser cuts to other government programs.
I personally don't see what all of the fuss is about. Democrats have long wanted to raise taxes, and Bill Clinton's idea of what Americans should pay in income taxes should be fine with most Democrats. Why not return to the previous Clinton tax rates? And eliminating the 2% tax break in FICA tax will keep social security solvent, which everyone seems to want. And deeply cutting the military is a liberal's dream. What's the big deal? The Democrats won the last election. Let's do things their way for the next two-four years and see how things turn out.