Mediaboss Marketing

As the potential grows for a euro-quake that could well send a financial tidal wave racing toward America, and the U.S. heads toward a "fiscal cliff" of its own, created by Congress, you'd think political leaders here would be uniting urgently to preserve the fragile economic recovery taking place.

But that of course would assume rational politics, grounded in reality, and a determination to protect the nation from another financial nightmare.

And that is just about the opposite of how Washington works these days. Which is why the public holds Congress in about the same regard as ambulance-chasing shysters.

Consider the so-called fiscal cliff.

Last summer, Tea Party Republicans made it clear and it turned out they were serious that they would force the nation into default, with all the disastrous consequences that would entail, rather than raise the national debt limit to accommodate more borrowing to pay for government programs mandated by Congress itself. (Raising the limit was routine in the past.)

As the brinkmanship tore away at the economy, both parties eventually agreed to strike a committee to examine how the colossal deficit can be reduced.

But they also built in a sort of dead-man's switch: automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would be triggered at the end of this year if committee members could not agree on what to do.

Naturally, they could not agree.

The Democrats were willing to compromise, and accept Republican-sponsored spending cuts if tax increases on the wealthiest Americans were also implemented.

Republicans insisted on spending cuts as the entire solution. They refused to even consider forcing the rich to pay more.

See the rest here:
Neil Macdonald: How compromise became a dirty word in Washington