We are already over the cliff

In the contentious debate regarding the impending “fiscal cliff,” one glaring fact remains substantially ignored: We are already over the cliff. With galloping deficits now commensurate with the nation's GDP, we have lost the ability to fund the gargantuan spending appetite of the entitlement state.

Democrats would have us believe that merely coercing the wealthy to pay their “fair share” will somehow fill the revenue gap. But with the top income 1 percent now paying more than the bottom 95 percent (source: taxfoundation.org), the wealthy already pay their fair share plus a goodly portion of everyone else's. Even attaching all their assets would sate this monster for at most a few weeks or months and cripple the economy. The Democrats' fanciful claims fail simple arithmetic.

For a century now, progressive liberalism has preached radical egalitarianism: of “right to possess” superseding “responsibility to earn.” Government, the “great equalizer,” is promoted as a gigantic manna machine, a savior to “right all wrongs.” It is an impossible quest. Human demand is infinite and a sprawling federal bureaucracy can never achieve the unrealistic utopian expectations created in the minds of a population beguiled by this seductive mirage.

But this ideology is woven into the philosophical fabric of the Democratic Party. The Democrats own the fiscal cliff, hence have no moral standing to bully so-called “obstructionist” Republicans, who are simply trying to prevent the federal government from devouring the nation.

Dale Fitzgibbons

Cedar Rapids