'Fiscal cliff'? 'Sequester'? Your guide to Congress's code language.

Members of Congress know what they mean by terms such as 'fiscal cliff' or 'Simpson-Bowles,' but to many outside the Beltway they may as well be speaking Greek. Here's a translation of Washington's shorthand terminology for budgetary issues now before the country – with each entry explained in 50 words or less.  

1. Fiscal cliff

Evan Vucci/AP/File
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta tells the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 15, 2011, that draconian, automatic defense spending cuts set to begin in 2013 would endanger national security, invite aggression, and devastate Defense Department operations.

An economic precipice, created by law in summer 2011, that threatens to cast the US back into recession; a fiscal hit of up to $720 billion over time, starting Jan. 1, 2013, caused by the expiration of a host of tax cuts and the onset of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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