Never mind the cliff. Talk about much ado about nothing…

And for any of you out there who actually found themselves surprised by this short-sighted, one-sided solution, you simply haven't been paying attention. And don't be surprised again in a couple of months when we end up right back here. Or as one congressman put it, all they managed to do was break down a single fiscal cliff into a trio of smaller ones – never mind that despite the deal, all they managed to do is essentially tax all of us more (via the payroll tax holiday expiration) while adding another $4 trillion to the budget deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

It is an excellent case study in federal backsliding as an everyday way of doing business: yet another Medicare doc fix when the administration touted that reimbursement cut as a way of making PPACA budget-neutral.