"Republicans will cave on the question of raising the tax rate for the highest-income Americans. The only question is whether they do so before or after the government goes over the so-called fiscal cliff. 

"First, many in the GOP do not believe that raising the rate on top earners from 35 percent to 39.6 percent (the rate before the Bush tax cuts) would seriously damage the economy. Second, they know that most Americans approve of higher taxes on the top bracket, and President Obama, having campaigned and won on that platform, seems dead-set on higher rates. Third, they fear that if the government does go over the cliff and Democrats propose re-lowering taxes for everyone except the highest earners, Republicans would be in the impossible position of resisting tax cuts for 98 percent of the country on behalf of the top 2 percent."

"Republicans underestimate their ability to win the fiscal-policy argument in the public arena. If everyone's taxes go up, voters will instinctively blame the party of higher taxes. Mr. Obama has spent two years hammering the country about the fairness of redistribution -- but Republicans have inoculated themselves against additional demagoguery by conceding and proposing that the rich pay more. 

"The president's broader fiscal argument is even weaker. He demands new stimulus spending, abandons deficit reduction and serious entitlement reforms, double-counts previously enacted savings, and labels tax increases as a balanced approach. Republicans can win this debate and gain further negotiating leverage if they are willing to try."

"[T]he most frightening aspect of the White House proposal is that it wasn't an error. Perhaps the proposal was thoroughly calculated. This suggests a president who doesn't care about the outcome of the cliff negotiations -- who thinks that he wins politically no matter what. He's betting that either the GOP will be far more responsible than he is and do anything to avert a crisis, or that the cliff gives him the tax hikes his partisans are demanding. Win-win, save for the enormous pain to average families across the country."

"With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care — expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed 'fiscal cliff,' the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party’s agenda."

"Whatever resolution is achieved for the Fiscal Cliff will probably make very little difference to the long-term trajectory of the U.S. economy. What does matter desperately is entitlement reform, controlling the growth of health-care costs and, ideally, some sort of comprehensive tax reform that could raise a bit more money while being less of a burden on economic growth. Unless these issues are addressed, the Fiscal Cliff debate may monopolize the attention of legislators and commentators, but it will all be a lot of sound and fury signifying very little indeed." 

"The actual liabilities of the federal government -- including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits -- already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure. 

"Why haven't Americans heard about the titanic $86.8 trillion liability from these programs? One reason: The actual figures do not appear in black and white on any balance sheet. ...

"Neither the public nor policy makers will be able to fully understand and deal with these issues unless the government publishes financial statements that present the government's largest financial liabilities in accordance with well-established norms in the private sector. When the new Congress convenes in January, making the numbers clear -- and establishing policies that finally address them before it is too late -- should be a top order of business."

"Conservatives are worried that the negotiations that will begin this week to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' will end in disaster. Tax increases that will weaken the economy could be combined with spending cuts that never materialize in an agreement that will leave many Republicans — especially those who have signed the 'no net new taxes' pledge promoted by Americans for Tax Reform — vulnerable to public outrage, and indeed to primary challenges in the midterm elections. 

"The way to avoid that outcome may be for conservatives to insist on the transparency and openness that Barack Obama has spent much of his career promoting but has almost never delivered in practice.  ...   

"Having the budget negotiations out in the open would at least expose such blatant hypocrisy on the part of the Obama administration or, at best, force it to pony up and negotiate honestly. If negotiations remain in the shadows, Democrats will follow the precedent they’ve set in years past and push for higher taxes in order to feed an ever-growing government that they have little interest in reforming."

"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, let us swear allegiance to a land that's free; let us all be grateful for a land so fair, as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer: 

"God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above.  From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam -- God bless America, my home sweet home."

"Running the [ObamaCare] exchanges would be an administrative nightmare for states, requiring a complicated set of rules, mandates, databases and interfaces to establish eligibility, funnel subsidies, and facilitate purchases. All of this would have to take place under broad and often incoherent statutory requirements and federal regulations that have yet to be written. 

"The exchanges would create unsustainable pressures on each state's insurance market, treating similarly situated people differently by providing far greater subsidies for those in the exchanges than those in employer plans -- yielding perverse incentives that distort consumer and employer decisions and increase costs. ... 

"President Obama won re-election and Democrats maintained control of the Senate this month, but the states hold the future of ObamaCare in their hands. Knowing the harm the law would do to their citizens, to the economy and to American health care, governors should refuse to become its enablers."

"A few days ago, the president announced that he would be holding firm on his demand for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue from the rich as part of any deal he would make to address the 'fiscal cliff' and our debt problem. In theory, the president promises some spending cuts. That's what he calls the 'balanced approach,' and it is a recipe for disaster because it will both fail to address our debt problem and hurt the economy. ... 

"The bottom line is that Obama's 'balanced approach' more closely resembles the historic failures -- the fiscal adjustments that don't successfully reduce a nation's debt-to-GDP ratio. What's more, history reveals that the balanced approach generally results in tax increases but rarely delivers on the spending cuts. That's unfortunate, considering that if the government could actually collect $1.6 trillion over 10 years from tax increases, this amount still wouldn't be enough to fill in the projected $6 trillion cumulative deficit over the period."