A reason to bargain

As the dust of the election settles, the nation’s economic woes are what they were before campaign fever set in: an immediate unemployment problem and a longer-term deficit problem. And when it comes to solving the latter problem, the two parties remain divided on the relative merits of cutting social spending and raising taxes on the rich.

There is one difference now. Twice in two years, Washington resorted to kicking the can of fiscal problems down the road. As a result, we have reached the brink of the “fiscal cliff”—and there’s a real chance that our leaders will take decisive action to avoid it.

A 2010 deal extended the Bush era tax cuts for two years. Then in 2011, Congress set up a bipartisan “supercommittee” charged with reducing the deficit, and it mandated massive across-the-board spending cuts should this panel fail to act. Fail it did, and the spending cuts are set to start kicking in early next year, the same time that the Bush tax cuts expire.