Let's do it, let's fall over that fiscal cliff. [View all]

[MadHound]

Because quite frankly, the options that are being seriously discussed, cuts to SS, Medicare, Medicaid, closing tax loopholes, all of these measures and others that are being bandied around are going to be much more harmful in the long run than going over the fiscal cliff.

Yes, there will be pain involved, but that pain can be mitigated. For instance, next January we could introduce a bill that would restore the tax cuts for the middle class, along with other spending we want to see come back, and dare the 'Pugs to vote down a tax cut.

But if we make some sort of grand bargain, at the last minute, behind closed doors, it will cost all of us, or at least those of us who aren't rich, more in the long run. Let's just say that as part of the grand bargain we up the age for SS qualification a couple of years. I don't know about you, but for me that means thirty thousand that I paid into SS goes away, poof, gone. The same holds true with Medicare, Medicaid and various middle class tax loopholes. Poof, gone.

Even if we can't reinstate tax cuts for the middle class, I would rather being paying Clinton era tax rates than watching the fiscal underpinnings of vast swathes of the social safety net destroyed. Our social safety net is already in bad shape, we don't need to make it worse.

Besides, while compromise is a good thing, the 'Pugs have learned one important thing over the past four years: If they govern by making everything into a looming crisis, they essentially get their way. It is time that Obama and the Democrats show them that they mean business when it comes to playing political chicken. It will make dealing with them so much easier in the future.

But sadly, that's probably not going to happen. Rather we will once again be treated to the spectacle of Obama and the Dems compromising away our future well being. Sure, we will have won a victory by getting the 'Pugs to go back on their no new taxes pledge. Big whoop, a pyrrhic victory at best, since we will all lose in the long run.