The Fiscal Cliff: Why You Should Care

Repost from Mocha Mom Mondays:

Now that the presidential election is over, you’ve been hearing stories on the news about the so-called fiscal cliff, a series of tax increases and deep spending cuts that will begin on January 1, 2013, barring any Congressional action. It’s a term that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke first used to describe a group of monetary policy actions in Congressional testimony earlier this year. The fiscal cliff would mean two things: 1) the end of the tax breaks passed in 2001 and 2003 plus the end of more recent tax changes that specifically benefit working families such as the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, and the payroll tax cut and other important policies and 2) automatic spending cuts to a wide variety of children’s programs and other functions of the government Congress set in motion in the middle of 2011.1 President Obama wants the Bush era tax cuts to expire at the end of the year for the wealthiest two percent of the nation’s households, but Republicans oppose it.

As stay at home mothers of color and an organization of mostly middle class families, many who are small business owners, it’s important that we all understand the fiscal cliff. I had the pleasure of visiting the White House last week with presidents from the 18 other collaborating organizations of

The Black Women’s Agenda, a group with a reach of more than 4 million Black women. The urgent topic at hand was the fiscal cliff, what it is and what it means to Black women and their families.

Here is what we know so far, and why YOU should care:

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