The fiscal cliff is looming. The United States is facing yet another crisis, and this time it’s more than the economy that will go over the edge.

First of all, the “fiscal cliff” is a shorthand term for the package of government spending cuts, tax increases and reduction to the United States Federal budget deficit that will automatically go in effect on midnight December 31, 2012. This means the end of the temporary payroll tax cut – a 2% tax increase for workers; the end of specific tax breaks for businesses; changes in the alternative minimum tax, raising taxes for many; the beginning of the 3.8% ObamaCare tax, taxing incomes over $250,000 to fund ObamaCare; and the end of the Bush tax cut.

“I feel that it’s more likely we will go over the cliff than not,” retiring Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) said on CNN’s “State of the Union Show.” “If we allow that to happen, it will be the most colossal, consequential act of congressional irresponsibility in a long time, maybe ever in American history.”

If it does happen, the bottom line is that income taxes would rise for almost all income brackets. Spending cuts would affect over 1,000 government programs, including defense and Medicare. The federal budget deficit would drop by about half, to about $560 billion. So the "fiscal cliff" really means we'd have a slightly smaller government, higher taxes and a much smaller federal budget deficit.

“I think the president sees victory at the bottom of the cliff,” Said Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) who accused Obama of wanting to take the government over the edge. “He gets all this additional tax revenue for new programs, he gets to cut the military, which Democrats have been calling for, for years and he gets to blame Republicans for it.”

A smaller government would be a good thing. A fifty percent drop in the federal budget deficit also seems like a major step in the right direction. And higher taxes wouldn’t be devastating to many, but to Grover Glenn Norquist, founder and president of “Americans for Tax Reform,” it would call for a major change. His entire career is based on the principle that Republicans cannot compromise on raising taxes under any circumstances. His “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” was signed by 95% of all Republican members of Congress prior to the November 2012 election.

However, President Obama was ready to raise the income threshold for tax rate increases to $400,000, and to in order to make a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, but the deal was averted, as Speaker of the House, John Boehner instead chose to pursue his “Plan B” – a right-wing proposal that was rejected by congressional Republicans. It would have raised the tax rates on incomes over $1 million, a violation of Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

“The idea that we face some dire situation just because we miss the January 1 deadline is an invention,” said Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There is nothing that happens as a result of missing the cliff as long as a deal is struck soon after. people have known it could be missed for a while and that likely has been priced in. There may be some modest drop off in the immediate aftermath, but prices will stabilize and bounce back when there is a deal.”

Yet, some would say the only solution for avoiding a constitutional breakage is for a bipartisan majority to take control of the House – and for that group to shun those who would rather see the country fall into the abyss because of their ideological sensibilities.

“I hope we would have one last attempt here to do what everyone knows needs to be done, which is the larger plan that really does stabilize the debt and get us moving in the right direction,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who also stated that Republicans and Democrats should split the difference in their proposals with a deal that would amount to $1.45 trillion in spending cuts and $1.15 trillion in new tax and other revenue.

If a deal isn’t met, who will be blamed in the next election?