Taxes? Fixed!

Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. America. I hope you slept well. If you didn't, it could be because of all this trouble we've been having, as a country, with our finances. I know that we've been asking a lot of you lately: paying more for a gallon of gas, cutting back on those extras like food and clothing, and skipping the occasional mortgage payment. We really appreciate your patience and understanding while we got together and figured this whole thing out. Again, if you were having trouble sleeping or if you had any doubt that your government was on the case, you can relax, because the whole Fiscal Cliff thing has been settled. Just ask Mitch McConnell.

"The tax issue is finished. Over. Completed," McConnell said on ABC's "This Week." "That's behind us. Now the question is what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and that's our spending addiction. We didn't have this problem because we weren't taxing enough." Well, thanks for straightening that out for us, Mitch. He went on:"Why we end up in these last-minute discussions is beyond me. We need to function. I mean, the House of Representatives, for example, passed a budget every year. They've passed appropriation bills. The Senate Democratic majority and the president seem to like these last-minute deals." 

Poor Mitch and his downtrodden Senate Republican pals, just sitting there in that big old drafty chamber while the Democrats were all out doing heaven knows what when they should have been making whatever deal they were handed by their GOP counterparts and been happy with it. In the meantime, it's time to buck up and start confronting our country's "spending addiction." Unless that spending happens to be on Homeland Security or the Defense Department. Cut Social Security or those frivolous mental health programs instead. The National Endowment for the Arts? I guess we can all do without that, right? And while we're at it, why not go ahead a cut those subsidies to Public Broadcasting? Just when you thought you were safe, right Big Bird? 

So, thanks again for getting that whole tax thing fixed, and please let us know if there's anything else you'd like us to give up.