Hold on to your mountain-climbing gear – the fiscal cliff is upon us.
The Charlotte Observer will host a public forum on Friday that will bring together former and current members of Congress to address the looming cliff and government gridlock. Participants include representatives Patrick McHenry, Mel Watt and Mick Mulvaney of the Charlotte region, as well as former members Jim Martin and John Spratt. Kimrey Rhinehart, a former top aid to Sen. Richard Burr, will also be there.
The Observer’s Rick Thames writes:
Your government has worked itself into a national crisis. Call it a fiscal cliff. Call it a wall of fire. Or simply call it a train wreck.
Just know that it is coming on Jan. 1 if the president and Congress do not find some way to defuse a time-bomb that would again derail the economy.
The forum starts at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of UNCC’s uptown campus building, 320 E. 9th St. Click here for more information and to register.
This article appears in Nov 21-27, 2012.
If Obama had actually been doing a his job we would not be facing a “Fiscal Cliff”. For almost 4 years Obama and the Democrats have operated our nation without a Federal Budget. Obama has refused to demand a budget from Harry Reid and the Senate and as a result, the Fed Gov has been operating with short term stop-gap budgets and other misc spending bills. The “Fiscal Cliff” is owned by Obama. This is his economy, his budget (or lack thereof), his deficit, his unemployment.
Getting closer to a balanced budget is desirable. It is NOT going to “derail the economy”. The problem is that we count government spending as GDP when the fact is that the government doesn’t provide end user goods or services. Bombs dropped on brown people in Yemen and billions given to AIG and GM and Solyndra do not constitute genuine productivity. Let’s remove government spending from what is considered “the economy” and utilize a new metric – call it “Net Domestic Product” to measure real, private-sector, growth.