Ready for another cliffhanger?

Midnight Dec. 31, tax rates jump back to the levels under Clinton, and the defense budget plummets.

First of all, let’s all remember, the fiscal cliff is an artificial precipice, like smearing Tabasco on a kid’s thumb to get him to stop sucking it. He just sucks the other thumb or develops a taste for hot sauce.

So John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and a representative from Ohio, the most powerful state in the free world, steps to the podium to say this:

“Because the American people expect us to find common ground, we’re willing to accept some additional revenues via tax reform.”

Sounds reasonable, but note the final three words: “Willing to accept additional revenues via tax reform.”

The minute you talk about rewriting the tax code, you’re talking long past Dec. 31.

So it sounds like Mr. Boehner and his Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell, or as I call them, Thelma and Louise, it sounds like they want to keep pushing the Romney Plan. The same plan that we as a collection of independent states just finished not electing.

Yes, the election was close. And yes, it’s true that those same states also elected pretty much the same Congress.

But when all was said and done, Barack Obama had a national approval rating of 50, Mitt Romney had a respectable 44, and the Peoples’ House had a pretty chilly 17. And that’s Fahrenheit not Celsius.