Jon Stewart on Thursday presented viewers with a primer on the so-called fiscal cliff: During the debt limit negotiations of 2011, Congress put in place a catastrophic penalty that would be triggered if lawmakers couldn’t compromise and work together to reduce the deficit.
“Let me put it another way. There’s an asteroid headed towards the Earth. We made it and fired it at ourselves, because otherwise we would never have done the hard work required to protect ourselves from asteroids,” Stewart said.
Perhaps the problem can be solved with words instead of hard numbers, Stewart suggested. “Rather than fixing this, why don’t we call this bad thing something less bad.”
Watch the video:
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Cliffpocalypsemageddonacaust - Totally Solvable Budget Problem | ||||
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David Taintor
David Taintor is TPM’s News Editor. He contributes to TPM’s Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com
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