Bankrupting America : A project of Public Notice

Today, Bankrupting America, is rolling out a new campaign called: "Talk is Cheap, Overspending is Not," to hold Washington lawmakers accountable for their promises to cut wasteful spending and get America's debt and deficits under control.

Lately, there's been some talk in the news that the fiscal cliff bill has $10 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts. Not so fast. When you look at the facts, there are virtually no cuts in the fiscal cliff bill.

Number of pages in the legislation that was passed to avoid the fiscal cliff: 154 - Find these stats and more in our By the Numbers breakdown of the Fiscal Cliff legislation.

After threatening another downgrade of the U.S. credit rating before the fiscal cliff deal, agencies like Moody’s and S&P both essentially say nothing’s changed.

Congressional negotiation over the fiscal cliff finally came to a conclusion this week as the Senate and the House both passed HR 8, the American Taxpayer Relief Act. The Act permanently extended many temporary tax provisions that were enacted in 2001 and 2003 under the Bush Administration and in 2010 under the Obama Administration, while delaying the non-targeted spending cuts that were scheduled to take effect on January 2, 2013, under the sequester.

A roundup of the latest must-read budget and economic stories.

According to the Associated Press, the fiscal cliff deal was "supposed to be a way to force Washington to confront our long-term debt problem." Unfortunately for Americans, politics prevailed.

For all of the rhetoric about a "balanced approach" to reducing the deficit, Congress' last-minute Fiscal Cliff deal contains no actual reductions in spending - merely opting to place "caps" on future increases.

Alan Simpson & Erskine Bowles called the last-minute Fiscal Cliff deal approved by Congress a "missed opportunity" to make real reforms to control our deficit spending problem.