The Norquist Tax Pledge vs Fiscal Cliff

For those of you that don't know, Grover Norquist is a conservative activist who created an "Anti-Tax Pledge" for politicians to sign who are against any and all tax increases in order to let voters know where they stand. All over the news lately (or at least since immediately after the election) is what is called "The Fiscal Cliff." In a nutshell, the Fiscal Cliff is what we are told the country will fall over in January 2013 because of an automatic rise in taxes coupled with a mandatory sequestration on government spending which expert say will be devastating to the economy. What doesn't make sense is that liberals are fear-mongering the public into pressuring the Norquist Pledge Signers into caving in to raising taxes. It doesn't make sense because if nothing is done, taxes are set to raise automatically because the Bush Tax cuts expire. Tom Cohen of CNN says,

"With the U.S. economy showing more signs of improvement in its long recovery from recession, economists point to fears about higher taxes in 2013 as a potential threat to rising consumer confidence."

It seems to me that what I am seeing is very well executed plan by Democrats to put Republicans in a no-win situation: Either they violate their pledge and agree on a compromise which includes raising taxes which can be used against them when the higher taxes are blamed for stunting the growth of the economy even further, OR they can blame Republicans for sending us over the fiscal cliff by doing nothing, OR they can blame Republicans for the national deficit spiraling out of control if they keep their Norquist Pledge and pass legislation to not allow a raise in taxes.

What everyone should keep in mind is that taxes are the dollars earned by the hard work of people like you and I and redistributed to politicians to do with it what they want to. Money is power, so this effectively gives even more power to the Socialists in control of Washington.

Please do not fall for this fear mongering and focus on what's real. We don't have a TAX problem. While it might not be true for the bottom 47% of wage earners, the government gets plenty of our money, in terms of percentage of our income. We have a REVENUE problem. The BEST way to increase revenue is by ADDING more taxpayers by way of increasing the number of jobs (decreasing unemployment) and by increasing average wages (by fixing the economy). And honestly, the only reason we have a revenue problem is because the amount of revenue is nowhere near what the government spends, hence the national deficit. So we also have a major SPENDING problem. The biggest consequence of the current spending problem under the Socialists in control is that they are using a big chunk of the taxpayers money to pay able-bodied people to live comfortable enough to NOT work. This creates an unstable situation of reducing the need to work for people who would otherwise be able to earn enough to pay the taxes to increase the revenue that the government so desperately needs. The end result is a collapse, plain and simple. So Democrats are doing this free-stuff-givaway of taxpayer money in order to earn votes necessary to make such a giveaway possible all at the expense of the entire society, and possibly our beloved country as we have known it. What happens to the United States and her Constitution when the government that runs it and protects it dissolves? And are Democrats doing this knowingly or are they just ignorant of these consequences?