OTHER VOICES:

Fiscal cliff deal is better than it looks

E.J. Dionne

Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013 | 2 a.m.

To be deemed a serious analyst at the moment seems to require a lot of hand-wringing and sneering over how awful Congress looked over the past few days as it rushed a “fiscal cliff” deal into law. So permit me to burn my membership card in the League of Commentators and Pundits. Of course, there was much wrong about how Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, dealt with the best-known deadline in recent political history. A better deal was available weeks ago. But in the end, some very important and positive things happened. Democracy, in its messy way, worked. An ...

E.J. Dionne is a columnist for the Washington Post.

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By CarmineD (Carmine DiFazio)

Jan. 3, 2013

5:40 a.m.

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If you view the problem as a revenue issue, as Mr. Dionne does, then yes on its surface the latest agreement appears successful. If however you view the problem, as most Americans do, as a huge spending problem, you realize that this latest cliff remedy is just a small financial bandaid and kicks the can down the road. How do I know? Well for one, keep a close watch on the markets and credit rating agencies in the weeks and months ahead. Despite the temporary uptick yesterday in the markets, once the realization of what really happened sets in, see what the markets and credit rating agencies do.

CarmineD