Happily, the world did not end on December 21, as some interpreters of the Mayan Long-Count Calendar predicted. Earth did not get sucked into the black hole at the center of the galaxy; it did not crash into the planet Nibiru; its core did not heat up, causing earthquakes and tsunamis and other nasty things as in the schlocky sci-fi film a few years back.
No devastating collapse hit Washington either, despite ominous warnings about partisanship and polarization. Agencies kept running, Social Security checks got mailed, the government didn’t default on its debts. Still, as 2012 draws to a close, the departing 112th Congress has left a nagging sense of unease about the condition of Washington policymaking. The erosion of governing goes on.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the state of the budget. The federal government will likely produce its fifth straight trillion-dollar-plus deficit in fiscal year 2013. Publicly held debt exceeds three-fourths of the economy’s total resources, and is on course to be double the size of the entire economy in 25 years.
Driving the problem is federal spending, which reached nearly $3.6 trillion in 2012, close to one fourth of all the nation’s economic resources. Adjusted for inflation, spending is more than three times its peak level in World War II. The three largest entitlements—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—and interest on the debt will surge to 18.5 percent of GDP by 2025, swallowing up all the historical average of federal tax revenue. Here too, the crisis might not arrive in a sudden, cinematic cataclysm. More likely federal spending will continue to gradually drain the nation’s resources, leaving a chronically anemic economy.
Read more at The Foundry. By Patrick Louis Knudsen.
Photo credit: Jessie Owen (Creative Commons)
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The Fiscal cliff has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are no longer a RULE – BY – LAW nation but we have gone to the Democracy side of the equation and are now a RULE – BY – MAN for the executive, the legislative and the Courts are just living in a total usurped Constitutional world – if the Congress wants the law then OK – if the Executive wants to just ignore enforcing laws and then creates new laws without legislative support – so what.
Yes – citizens we are now living in a RULE – BY – MAN socialist democracy moving toward a dictatorship if you believe the worlds government history.
http://tinyurl.com/cbu2ho3
The Fiscal Cliff is a Joke and they know it, Our country is Going down either way. IF they do some thing or just watch it go over the Cliff. That is what we get when they let Idiots vote that are Stupid.
When we have lawyers in control tof government hat can`t balance their check book and pay their taxes tell us WE OWE $50000 for each man woman and child in the country. Sorry don`t know who those people are since I don`t own anyone a dime. The fools in Washington can`t give away money fast enough and wants more and more to give away and waste on ovamit phones and tree frogs. They spent it so they can pay for it. Why not just print it and burn it. Cuts out the middle people.
And believe it or not, our dear leader has a 53% approval rating on RCP averages. I didn’t know there were that may idiots in America.
Yes there is Wayne and we’re paying for it.