The price of compromise...

Today, we looked at my first payroll check of 2013...

I was more than $25 short from my last check of 2012, due entirely to the increased SSI tax and the 2% higher payroll tax withholding amount.

This is not an issue of too many early outs, either.  I'm salaried... meaning my paycheck hasn't varied by more than $0.02 since I became a full-time pit manager.  This is, without question, the result of the House compromise bill okay'd by Boehner and Co. to keep the gov't afloat through the "fiscal cliff" drama.  The compromise, though reached "after" the cliff edge, was designed to allow certain changes to happen automatically... and the payroll deduction percentage and the SSI increase were both part of that automatic increase.

So, assuming my wife makes just about half of what I do, we can expect to see $150 LESS per month in our bank accounts... or, to put it in more broad and general (and painful) terms, we will see $1,800 LESS in spendable income for the tax year of 2013.

That's two payments on my house note.  Or my car note and the power bill and the phone bill, three months.  Or an entire year of my daughter's college books bill.  $1800 worth of further financial cuts and needed savings that I have to work through in the coming 51 weeks of 2013.  No reduction in fuel costs (as promised by Obama in 2008), no reduction, or even stabilization of education costs for college students (as promised by Obama in 2008 and 2012), no boost to the economic picture that might equal increased revenue for my industry and, thus, to my wallet... just more penny-pinching, hair-pulling, do-without-and-like-it lifestyle changes thanks to the myopic, mindless meat-heads in DC that care more about "perception" than they do about solutions.

This is going to be a great year...