Heading Towards the Cliff

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/us/politics/questions-on-whether-boehner-could-sell-a-budget-deal-to-gop.html?ref=politics&_r=0

If you've watched the news recently, you've probably heard about the looming "fiscal cliff". I know I have. It's one of those things that I wonder about, but until now, never took the time to do some research on it. The fiscal cliff is something that will begin in 2013 if, as one of the explanation articles down below says, politicians make some "very bad congressional decisions." That means if there is no agreement reached on how to reduce the nation's deficit and overall improve our economy, then we will go over this "fiscal cliff". Meaning, there could be major tax increases and spending cuts if things don't take a turn for the good soon.

Put simply, what is happening currently, as explained in the article, Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are working to come up with a plan for reducing our nation's growing deficit. This connects to our lesson about parties and also previous lessons because in order for something to get approved, there need to be enough votes. In our government, parties have to work together at times, which is something I personally like because it shows unity. It shows that, while our country may be divided in a lot of ways politically, we are still united.

However, the problem with parties working together is that they have their own views, their own ways of taking on issues. Republicans typically don't want to raise taxes on the rich, or if they do it's not as high of an amount as Democrats. Barack Obama called for $600 billion more of taxes collected from the wealthy over a period of ten years than the Republicans did, for example. “Taxes are going to go up one way or another and I think the key is that taxes go up on high-end individuals", Barack Obama said.

Politics is conflictual, very conflictual, so there are always disagreements with things, due to the strong beliefs of both parties. As shown in a chart in chapter 7 of the textbook, their views are very different. Decades ago, the parties' views, as Grabriska said in our class, "mingled", so the views of parties mixed more. Throughout history there have been a series of party systems, in which one party was dominant, such as the fifth party system where the Democrats were dominant. There have been a lot of realignments in the past as well, where overall the views of the American Public have changed. During the current party system, the sixth, dealignment has been occurring, which is when people aren't as associated with parties as much, or even with politics in general. So with all of these alignments and dealignments, political views have changed a lot, and now views are more polarizing than before between not only the American Public but with political parties. So that plays a role, I believe, in the strong conflict between parties when doing almost anything.

With this in mind, do you think some plan will be put in place to reduce our deficit before we go over the "fiscal cliff"? Or will we go over? Why? Do you think there should be less conflict between parties? Or is that an unavoidable thing?


Explanation of Fiscal Cliff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_fiscal_cliff

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/27/absolutely-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-fiscal-cliff-in-one-faq/