Frustration boils over as fiscal cliff approaches

Do you know anyone who's pleased by the fiscal cliff negotiations?

Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but over the weekend many Americans said they felt burned by Congress as lawmakers fiddled with their economic future.

"You remember how when you were in kindergarten if you were bad the teacher would put you in time out?" Conroe, Texas, resident Traci Medinas told the Conroe Courier. "That's what needs to happen to everyone up there. I don't want any of my taxes to go up because they're all too busy trying to look good."

After House Speaker John Boehner was unable to rally support from fellow Republicans for a fiscal cliff fix, the focus shifted Sunday to the U.S. Senate. But both sides appeared far apart there, even with the clock counting down the hours until the start of 2013, when about $600 billion in tax hikes and government spending cuts kick in.

"Everybody is going through so much right now," Margaret Roberts said in an interview with WJZ Baltimore. "So many people out of work. They've got to settle this."

In Kalamazoo on Sunday morning, Caitlin O'Rourke and John Curran stood outside Michigan Congressman Fred Upton's office. The two are part of The Action, a group that wants Congress to "stop the political theater and pass the Bush tax cuts for the middle class."

"I'm disappointed Congress can't get a deal done for the American people," Curran told the MLive website. That's what we send them there to do." O'Rourke added that he worried the middle class wouldn't be able to absorb the tax increase.

"Maybe this is a sign we need to step up and talk to our representatives because they are in 'La la land,'" Portsmouth, Va., resident Courtney Felton said.

"They can't make a decision on something that's going to happen at the first of the year so do you think most of them can make a decision on what's going to happen five years down the road?” another Portsmouth voter, Bernard Brooks, told WAVY-TV. "Do most of them care? Do they not think they are going to be in office that long?"

"My concern is that they don't have a concern of their own about how their lack of action is going to affect the rest of the country," Richard Mobayed of Huntington, W.Va., said in an interview with the local Herald-Dispatch. "It seems like they are staying so rigidly by their party lines that they aren't taking the people of the U.S. into account over their parties' interests."

In South Dakota, Ron Cunningham believes there’s only one certain result to the fiscal cliff fiasco.

"I think regardless of whether it gets resolved or not, taxes are going to be increased, even though people don't want them to,” he told KSFY in Sioux Falls. It's just going to make people who are struggling, who are working minimum wage, it's just going to make it harder to get by."

More on Money Now

• Are gas prices about to take off?
• Is human progress slowing down?
• Stocks slump as fiscal cliff deadline nears