With the recent election over, it’s time once again for America to focus its attention back to its deficit.  Moves are already being made by the Obama administration to remedy the deficit by hiking taxes back up once the Bush tax cuts expire, however many think the move is too drastic.

The term “fiscal cliff” has made its way into the mainstream as a way of describing what will happen when the government imposes the $670 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts come January 1st, however there’s still no agreed upon method for achieving them.

I think the biggest problem for the US at this point is realizing that they can’t just outright cut spending to key areas such as healthcare in order to extend tax cuts.  The US has an increasingly aging population that is going to be a huge drag on healthcare costs in the near future, so to start cutting out spending on the sector now would be ludicrous.

Most importantly the Republicans need to understand that keeping taxes at Bush levels is too idealistic with this demographic change incoming, taxes need to be sacrificed in order for the government to meet the social needs.

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