Well, I’m glad that’s over.

Now that the House has passed the Senate compromise bill, the full spate of tax increases and spending cuts that went into effect yesterday will be shut off (though the sequester was just suspended for a couple of months). Still, I don’t mean to be a downer, but any relief you feel should be analogized to how much better you feel when you stop banging a hammer on your head. We’ve avoided, for the moment, a self-made trap. Now, of course, we’re on to the next one—the debt ceiling, which really is a cliff in that to go over it (can you “go over” a ceiling?) is to default.

The resolution of the fiscal cliff was much as I and others predicted—a very short trip over the cliff—more of a bungee jump, really. As we said, once House R’s could label a vote for the compromise a net tax cut, enough of them could vote for it. In fact, one of their leaders, Dave Camp (R-MI) sold the measure to his caucus as the “largest tax cut in American history.”

So, did we learn anything from the episode in reckless governing? Here’s my list, but these are more things we already knew than things we learned:

1) It’s become a clichÃ© to observe the dysfunctionality of our political system. The problem—which has existential implications—is that the system cannot diagnose, prescribe, and thus it cannot self-correct. To the contrary, it is becoming increasingly efficient at inflicting wounds. The most important question in politics right now is: how did Congress become the biggest threat to the economy and what can be done about it? I actually have a pragmatic, actionable answer to that….read on.

2) Republicans don’t care about deficit reduction. They care about protecting the wealthy (I told you this is stuff we knew) which worsens the deficit. Their talking points suggest they want to cut spending, reduce entitlement s and shrink government, but for the most part—there are notable exceptions*—they don’t have actual proposals to do so.