its so confusing i havent a clue what this thread is about after 2 ****ing pages.
Back in 2011, as the nation was approaching its debt ceiling, Congress authorized the creation of a committee that would work with the President to come up with a budget plan to reduce deficits. If the budget that the committee presented to Congress was approved, the debt ceiling was to be raised. If the budget proposal was rejected (and it was), the debt ceiling was to be raised less, and a set of automatic tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts were arranged to go into effect on January 1, 2013, assuming another budget proposal could not be agreed upon, before that date. The real name for those tax increases and budget cuts is the "budget sequester," but pundits took to calling it the "fiscal cliff" because that sounds much more dramatic and makes for better television/radio/newsprint. The reason it's come up again is because the budget issue more or less got tabled, until after the election. Nobody in the capitol wanted to try negotiating with people who might not be in office, when it came time to implement a new budget.
Luis Dias is quite right about why the sequester is a potential problem. It's too much austerity implemented way too quickly. The sequester was designed to be exactly that, though. It was meant to be a looming threat to the economy that could be pinned squarely on the government, so that government leaders would feel pressure to come up with a workable budget, prior to 2013. See also: 1995/1996 government shutdown. We are developing something of a history of pre-arranging a dire consequence to inaction to try to spur budget negotiation, only to find that the willingness to negotiate doesn't materialize, until said consequence is just about to strike or has already struck.
Speaking of things that got tabled for way too long, the farm bill expires tonight, so if you're in the United States and you've got milk or cheese to buy, today is probably the day to do it. Just FYI.
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