Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 in what was an eleventh-hour effort to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” crisis. The cliff, a term coined by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, refers to a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that would have otherwise gone into effect had Congressional action not been taken. Since desperation seems to be the only factor that can motivate Congress to act, the House and Senate passed the aforementioned act in the early hours of the new year. Immediately, Washington tried to paint the law as a grand compromise between painfully divided Democrats and Republicans. This might be the case if the ATRA accomplished anything more than kicking the metaphorical can down the road, which sadly, it does not. Instead, the law simply serves to turn over the hourglass, once again, by raising taxes on the very highest incomes and enacting laughably minimal spending cuts.

The fact that the ATRA was passed with almost 90 votes in the Senate is indicative of the political unpalatability of potentially allowing the consequences of diving over the fiscal cliff to occur. While the fiscal cliff was designed as a measure to reduce the ever-ballooning national debt, the occurrence of its provisions would have, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, led to a mild recession and an increase in the unemployment rate. Obviously, this was not an option for Congress, even in a non-election year. The economy, after spending several years mired in the sewer, is showing signs of cautious improvement. Unemployment has slowly declined and home sales have increased. A reversal of these already-fragile gains, apart from tangibly harming the American public, would have turned an unpopular Congress into a loathed one. And so, the men and women on the Hill were faced with two options — find true compromise and enact difficult yet meaningful budget reform, or push through an ineffectual measure and act satisfied. Unsurprisingly, they chose the latter path, and the nation will, in the long run, hurt for it.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the revenue raised by tax increases in the ATRA is 41 times greater than the revenue saved by spending cuts. The figure should seem strange and alarming even to those who have no knowledge of economics or fiscal policy. Such an imbalance can be only explained by the fact that the real dollar amounts analogous to this ratio are comparatively small, thus the underwhelming nature of the law. The new taxes will raise approximately $60 billion per year for the next 10 years, a token figure in the context of a trillion-dollar budget deficit. Most of the new tax revenue is derived from an increase in the income tax for those making over $400,000 per year and an increase in the payroll tax. The latter measure is a two percent tax increase on everyone; the former, while not totally objectionable, is little more than a bone thrown to the sizeable segment of the population that wrongly believes that the nation’s problems can be solved by putting the screws to the rich. Since the revenues raised by such measures pale in comparison to the future cost of America’s entitlement programs, the actual potency of these new taxes towards reducing the debt is near-zero.

And so, Congress conveniently ignored solutions that, while tricky, would have provided for lasting reform. These potential solutions are well-known and are neither innovative nor new — Social Security reform and more efficient defense spending are two examples. These expenditures are deeply entrenched in the Washington status quo, and tackling them would be hard. However, the difficulty of such action does not change the necessity of it. The spectre of a United States with an ever-reddening balance sheet and the consequences of such a situation are far graver than the potential threat of a temporarily recessed economy. In theory, legislators would understand the importance of providing for the future, even at the possible expense of the present. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. However, as college students who necessarily have to look towards the future, this is indeed a lesson that we need to understand.