America is about to go over the cliff.

Thanks to our ever-thoughtful and extremely partisan leaders, our country is about to go over the Fiscal Cliff.

The “Fiscal Cliff” is the name given to a process called sequestration that will take affect at the end of this year.

“The Fiscal Cliff is the combination of tax hikes and federal spending cuts that are set to automatically go into effect at the end of 2012,” economics teacher Michael Melvin said.

With our Legislative and Executive branches divided, a deal most likely will not be made before the deadline, meaning that everyone’s taxes will go up no matter how successful you are, and discretionary federal spending, such as defense and transportation, will be cut as well.

“Tax increases and budget cuts would have a negative effect on the economy, meaning that it would slow economic growth,” Melvin said. “It also might be enough to push the U.S. economy back into recession and cause unemployment to rise again.”

Once again our leaders in Washington cannot come together to advert a coming crisis that will affect everyone in our nation.  What happened to the leaders that we have had in our past who were able to  put aside their differences to better this nation?  Leaders like Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Democratic President Bill Clinton were able to come together to create a balanced budget despite their many differences.

It is about time for our leaders to do what we the people elected them to do —  lead.