The Endless Cliff  Flickr/Talk Radio News Service  Beyond
yesterday’s narrow escape from the dreaded fiscal cliff are …
more cliffs. President Obama and Congress averted one fiscal
calamity of tax-hikes-for-all only to face even steeper
cliffs—the sequester, the debt ceiling, the Social Security
shortfall, ad infinitum. It is a fiscal Wizard of Oz, an
extended odyssey with perils on every side.  The question
progressives are asking themselves this morning is whether
President Obama settled for too little in the fiscal mini-deal,
having traded away his best single piece of leverage—the
automatic tax increase on all Americans scheduled to hit today
unless Congress acted.  Some, like our colleague Robert Reich,
have argued that it would have been better to “go over the
cliff”—let tax hikes briefly take effect on everyone, thus
increasing pressure on Republicans—rather than to make this
agreement.  Mercifully, Obama backed off any “grand bargain.”
The deal was a defeat not only for the Republicans but for the
Fix