opinion

Sen Amy Klobuchar is the "get" Senator? That's where this opinion loses ALL credibility. Our dear Sen Amy will have spent her entire 6 year term as part of a Dem Senate majority. The federal debt will have risen roughly 7.7 TRILLION by the end of her first term. She and her buddies even stopped writing budgets years ago-->likely out of shame. She needs to be replaced by teacher Bills, and perhaps he will understand fiscal math 101. Our current female Senator is truly a teflon Senator, and why that is truly is one of life's mysteries aka = 7.7 trillion new debt in 6 years.

You do your readers a great disservice by perpetuating this "fiscal cliff" myth. At worst it is a fiscal incline and not all that steep a one too. The entire universe knows that things will change after November 6. Congress will kick the can down the road until spring and the new congress will begin work in January. This Kabuki will continue mainly because the need for a grand bargain is receding.

Judeling- Not a fiscal cliff? What do you call the deficit from unpaid war? Nothing will change until congress/senators work together. I am not sure that will happen as long as we have all this baloney partisanship going on. Like they are Kings/Queens and I am talking both parties. Children really.

Great article ! This issue should be the defining topic for this election. Unfortunately neither candidate will define "what must be done" because it will alienate to many voters and cost them the election. So don't expect any real answers from either of them.....my advice. Buy Gold !

What would happen if we eliminated all tax deductions, exemptions, and credits and lowered the overall tax rate? What would happen if we took the cap off the social security payroll tax and allowed the wealthier to continue to contribute? What would happen if we reduced military spending and closed a few unneeded bases overseas? What would happen if we stopped subsidizing big oil, big ag, and stopped bailing out entities too big to fail? What would happen if we raised the social security retirement age and limited the cost of medicare and medicaid to the rate of inflation? What would happen if we asked the uber rich to kick in a little more to help us balance the budget and reduce the deficit? We'll never know, because all these recommendations will never happen. They'll never happen because everyone's ox gets gored and we have no appetite for shared sacrifice. They'll never happen until some really big crisis occurs and everyone will wonder why we didn't see that the light at the end of the tunnel was the freight train coming.

As a fiscal conservative I believe there is no way to reduce/eliminate the deficit other than material spending cuts AND moderate tax increases. We spend far too much in this country. (Anecdotal examples: A PBS Online article a couple of years ago estimated between $30-50B in Medicare fraud per year, students in my school district will each be getting iPads. Both of these are absurd)The fear is if we acquiesce to the idea of higher taxes, it will never stop.

The writer is totally wrong to lump Obama and Romney together on this issue - Romney has no power - Obama has been President for 4 years and ignored this issue totally. The resolution requires strong leadership and Obama provides none. Obama has lulled America to sleep on the fiscal issues by not even discussing them because when he does it reminds us of his failed policies. The economic crisis is the most predictable in history and Obama does nothing and says nothing. He is totally irresponsible in the fiscal arena. He has no budget, no plans and no ideas. It is almost like our fiscal policies have been created by a small time community organizer.

OK... Even if we double the taxes on the top 1%... It would lower the current deficit by a whopping 2.5%....

OUT-OF-CONTROL SPENDING IS THE PROBLEM.

And Obama seems to be the champion of out-of-control spending. Our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc will suffer greatly for the spending policies of our current president.

It is totally wrong to stick future generations with this debt due to the selfish spending today !!!

The alarm should be sounded on the global economy! We've spent the last half century unsuccessfully attempting to compensate for lack of reciprocation in our economy and our actions have created excessive risk and great debt. Our mistakes are today echoing around the world. Recognizing our own failure to force needed reciprocation along with history of world governments, where might one find the faith to believe that a global economy might ever reach necessary reciprocation?

All the studies and politics aside.... there is no escaping the fact that, if everyone draws out $100.00 FROM our gov., then everyone must also pay IN $100.00 to our gov. Otherwise, somebody else has to pick up the slack. Its easy to ask somebody else to pay for your dinner - but not so much fun being asked to pay for someone else's dinner. Its really, just that simple!! (I feel like Ruth's Chris tonight... which one of you is going to pay for me today? - um, thanks, btw!)