For the near term? Good. For the long term? Oh, puh-leeze.
That, in a nutshell, summarizes how independent deficit hawks
view the fiscal cliff compromise that Congress passed on Tuesday
and which President Obama signed into law Wednesday.  On the
bright side, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 largely
averts the economic pain of the scheduled tax hikes and spending
cuts in 2013.  "That reduced the probability of a recession
quite a bit," said Rudolph Penner, former director of the
Congressional Budget Office.  But, Penner quickly noted,
"[Congress and the White House] didn't do much else. And they
gave us a New Year's Eve present of another cliff in two
months."  The bill does not address the country's debt ceiling,
which needs to be raised by the end of February or early March.
And that debate promises to be "trench warfare," as one analyst
put it.  Plus, the bill simply postpones for two months the need
to replace the nearly $1 trillion in ill-conceived spending cuts
known as the sequester.  Calling