Posted by Leonard Steinberg on May 1st, 2012

I know its early, but each year December rolls around and we are all scrambling to write Christmas and Holliday cards and plan gifts: if only we had started earlier in the year! This year, an election year, planning for December is lots more important.

At the end of 2012, $ 1 trillion worth of discretionary spending and $ 2 trillion worth of tax cuts (The Bush tax cuts)expire….and this is aside from a massive US debt. Worse, a plan to address this looming crisis is seemingly impossible to implement in a lame-duck session because of the pending elections. So if a strong plan is not put into place in the month of December, it is more than likely that the US will be thrown into a recession in 2013, making December 2012, the December that could be known as DIRTY DECEMBER.

Many argue that the Bush tax cuts were unfairly advantageous to the rich and this may certainly be true: right now in a fragile recovery however, I’d rather be practical than right. If the goal is to collect more dollars in taxes, the focus should be on the dollars not the percentages. A growing economy always grows tax revenues, so collecting a higher percentage in taxes on a shrinking economy of lesser income is simply not smart.

So while those pesky Christmas and Hanukah cards loom, remember another as important (if not slightly more important) deadline that could affect us all……maybe call your Senator’s office and give them a friendly reminder that just like you and I, we all have responsibilities that simply cannot be avoided.