This is scary and infuriating, but it's not really all that surpising, is it?
The notion of a "fiscal cliff" suggests the country is approaching a calamitous drop-off at the end of the year — and it would be tantamount to suicide to jump off.
But a growing contingent of policy wonks and Democrats insists that letting the Dec. 31 deadline come and go — thus triggering automatic tax increases and spending cuts — could produce the best outcome for the country.
Once the tax increases have kicked in, the reasoning goes, Republicans would be hard-pressed to roll them all back and would have to accept a deal on taming the deficit that contains more new tax revenue than GOP lawmakers want.
So some policy analysts and legislators say they are willing to go over the brink; some are even gunning for Congress to do it.
Call them the cliff-divers.
"It will be much easier to negotiate a budget deal going over the cliff," said William Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institute and former adviser to President George H.W. Bush. "It seems to be the only way we can boost revenues."
Gotta boost those revenues, whatever the cost. Get more out of the evil rich, despite the pointlessness of that as a deficit-recution tool. Never mind that letting our path to the cliff continue will take a still-weak economy and wreck it all over again. What utter morons.
