The least bad option: Going over the artificial fiscal cliff

When fiscal scolds attack! Not when the GOP holds the White House. Last Friday, President Obama convened Congessional leaders to discuss the 'fiscal cliff':

President Obama summoned congressional leaders to a Friday summit at the White House in a last-ditch effort to protect taxpayers, unemployed workers and the fragile U.S. recovery from severe austerity measures set to hit in just four days. Also Thursday, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) announced that he would call the House back into session this weekend. And in perhaps the most significant development, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for the first time was engaged directly in talks with the White House. He signaled an interest in cutting a deal. [Emphasis supplied.]

The negotiations, carried out this weekend between Senate Leader Harry Reid and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (no doubt the  president was fully involved as well), have broken down.

You've read so much about the so called 'fiscal cliff' that I doubt it requires much elucidation: On January 1, 2013, the Bush tax cuts, extended for 2 years in the 2010 lame duck Congress, expire and automatic spending cuts put into place to resolve the debt ceiling hostage situation of August 2011 kick in. The 'fiscal cliff' did not fall from the sky, it was created by the Tea Party fueled GOP House and served by the phony fiscal scolds like the Fix the Debt group and other Pete Peterson financed organizations.

The insanity of it all is this mad dash is all centered on replacing the existing "severe austerity measures," as the Washington Post called them, with different severe austerity measures.  This is Very Serious People thinking at work.

In a rational world, the discussion would be about short term economic stimulus, and if we must, long term deficit reduction. But there is nothing rational about the Beltway or the world inhabited by Very Serious People. Thus, while the President proposed short term economic stimulus in his plan to address the fiscal cliff, it never even got a cursory hearing. We are now debating which least bad option to go with. In my view, the least bad option now is going over the cliff.

(Continue reading below the fold.)