"Cliffs" sometimes mean climbing, not falling

There is so much bleating about the "Fiscal Cliff" that faces us at the beginning of 2013 that one would think that the end of the world is imminent. Maybe a calm step back and reality check are in order here.  Really.

First, everyone is clamoring for the President and the Congress to "do something."  Really?  Seems to me that they have already done it.

In order to insure that we got our finances under control, the President came up with the idea...and Congress voted in agreement...that Congress would try to find a kinder, gentler way to achieve fiscal sanity, but if they were unable to agree, that taxes would go up and spending would go down.

That is a "balanced approach", to quote the President, and in line with his campaign mantra.

Second, not all cliffs mean a fall.  I mean, try imagining that the cliff in front of us involves a climb UP, not a fall down.  That doesn't seem quite as daunting, does it?  It never does, although once you start, you can get quite a shock when and if you look down instead of concentrating on your goal.

But, we have been digging ourselves a fiscal hole for years, so I maintain that the cliff coming in January is one going UP and that we can choose to successfully climb it.  And in the process, everyone goes back to the tax rates that the Democrat party found so desirable during the campaign;  it would be nice to know that more people receiving benefits from the government were actually contributing to them in a current fashion even as the amount being paid by the government-proclaimed "rich" also went up.  Balanced billing is good.

Some of my Progressive "friends" don't like that, but my response is that my father really didn't like it when they started taxing the interest on his savings, insisting that he had already paid taxes on that money and that they were hitting him twice.  he insisted that if they couldn't try him twice for the same crime, they shouldn't have the right to tax him twice...it wasn't fair.  In later years, he acknowledged that expecting the government to be fair was a fantasy.  I disagreed then, but totally agree now.

Anyway, we all could save a lot of time, anguish and "agida" by simply shutting up and getting our climbing gear on; let's just get on with the necessary climb...ALL of us.