Four days ‘til we fall off the cliff?

Will these people be able to reach agreement with the President?

We’ve had a lot of rhetoric in recent weeks about how we’re doomed financially. Our government in the District of Columbia is incapable of doing much of anything when it comes to compromise.

The dreaded “fiscal cliff” is just a few days away (Monday into Tuesday, to be exact). We’re going to see actions forced upon us that will drive our economy back into recession.

OF COURSE, THE ideologues (many of whom are among the hardest-core of those refusing to do anything) will try to claim it’s all Barack Obama’s fault! Which seems like what they really want to do – place blame on the president whom they didn’t vote for either time and are determined to see end his time in office in utter failure.

Those of us who are a little more rational in our thought process will realize that blame needs to be placed all the way around.

Yet I have to admit that my quarter-century of watching politicos as a reporter-type person has given me a perspective that has me thinking that all is not lost yet.

Because government officials tend to behave like “C-level” college students who insist in majoring in procrastination. How many papers do they write on the final weekend prior to its being due?

NOW THAT WE’RE approaching the final weekend before the deadline, this is the time period in which I expect to see any serious movement toward trying to reach a financial deal that would avert the significant tax increases that would be mandated unless officials can reach agreement on spending cuts.

The fact that any solution concocted during the weekend and voted on by Congress on Monday prior to that ball dropping in Times Square will be a rush-job will make it the equivalent of that college paper that ultimately got a “C” because nobody put any serious long-term thought into it.

Instead, it is just a short-term solution that likely will cause more problems than it resolves – even if it technically averts the fall off the cliff!

Not that I’m saying we should take the plunge and accept whatever hit comes along with it. We’re not Wile E. Coyote in the cartoons – we can’t get hit with an anvil and just bounce back into shape.

SO WE’RE LIKELY to get a mediocre solution put together – one bailed together with scotch tape (perhaps purchased from the “Scotch Tape store” from that old Saturday Night Live sketch?) that will make those of us who pay attention shudder.

While the masses just sort of shrug their shoulders and try to figure out how they’re going to pay off all those charge card bills they incurred during the soon-to-be complete holiday season.

Although I suspect the real motivation for many of our government officials will be to reach a solution that allows them to be out of D.C. and back home in time for whatever New Year’s Eve celebration plans they had in mind.

The only real fear is those people who are so stubbornly determined to do nothing. Because some of those ideological nitwits are more than willing to see everyone suffer around them.

THE THING IS the concept of the “fiscal cliff” is supposed to be a deterrent. It is supposed to be something so incredibly awful and horrid that political people would fear it. They would do anything to avoid it.

Yet those of us in Illinois see the way our redistricting goes – the process that ultimately gives control of the process to the winner of a random lottery.

Instead of fearing the prospect of getting nothing, political partisans greedily stand by their principles because they think they can win the lottery and TAKE EVERYTHING!!!!!

That same mentality is at work among some in Washington these days – and I’m sure they’re the only ones who enjoyed the New York Post front page on Thursday. That’s the one that figured out a way to get a picture of a girl in a bikini to illustrate the “fiscal cliff” story. Ugh!!!

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