Brawner: Peering Over The Fiscal Cliff

Steve Brawner, columnist for Stephens Media and a frequent Talk Business contributor, deploys his usual clarity on a major issue that won’t get much real discussion until after the elections.

Brawner reviews some of the pending dangers of the coming “fiscal cliff,” where automatic tax increases and spending cuts will push government leaders to perhaps devise a more equitable remedy.

He notes a recent effort made by the CEOs of 80 major U.S. companies who released a signed statement asking elected officials to address the growing $16 trillion national debt. The group asked for reforms to government programs as well as a call for raising taxes.

Brawner unearths an effort by state business leaders to extend the efforts of the 80 CEOs:

In Arkansas, Randy Zook, the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce’s executive director, will circulate a statement to his board of trustees and executive committee for their endorsement and then send it to the state’s members of Congress. Zook wants Congress to prevent the fiscal cliff from happening and then create a more surgical way of dealing with the country’s bleeding budget. He told me many of the tax increases are “business killers. They’re just terrible.”

Moving forward, the National Association of Manufacturers thinks that failing to avoid the cliff will cost six million jobs through 2014 and send the unemployment rate from its current eight percent to 12 percent. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office thinks unemployment will hit nine percent.

But no matter what happens between now and the end of the year, Washington’s inaction has already hurt the economy.

Read more of Brawner’s take here, including how the economy has already been bruised and battered by paralysis.