The phrase isn't new. Here's how it traveled from speculation about a western movie in 1966 to become shorthand for Washington's current budget crisis.
The "fiscal cliff" was born in 1966, in an article about the classic western, "Mackenna's Gold."
In a 1966 Film Daily article discussing where MacKenna's Gold would be filmed — the United States or Spain — the term "fiscal cliff" first appeared in print, and it had nothing to do with the United States budget.
"To runaway or not to runaway," read the article. "That was the question yesterday as writer-producer Carl Foreman presented Hollywood with a fiscal cliff-hanger awaiting [a] final decision next week on whether Foreman's projected $5,000,000 Western epic, 'Mackenna's Gold,' shall be filmed in the United States or in Spain."
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A version of the term next appeared a year later in 1967, this time referring to the federal budget.
Richard Spong, a writer for Editorial Research Reports, the periodical now known as CQ Researcher, wrote a piece headlined "The Fiscal Cliff-Hanger" on June 26, 1967. The article, discussing funds to be appropriated by Congress at the close of the fiscal year, appeared in the Ohio daily, the Youngstown Vindicator. Whether Spong or the Vindicator penned the fateful headline remains unknown.
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It came back in a 1975 headline.
Printed on May 13, 1975 in the Milwaukee Sentinel, the term was used in the way readers are meant to understand it today — to describe an impending financial crisis, in this case, in New York City.
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In 2003, Senator Kent Conrad said President Bush's tax cuts would "take this country right over the fiscal cliff."
In an effort to fight President George W. Bush's tax cut package, the Democrat from North Dakota took to the Senate floor to tell colleagues he couldn't "think of anything more irresponsible than enacting this plan," Conrad said on March 13, 2003. "If Congress were to actually adopt the plan before us, it would plunge the country off a fiscal cliff and threaten the education of our children, the financial security of our seniors, the stability of our economy, and the ultimate strength of our nation."
Two months later, on July 15, Sen. Conrad was featured in a piece on the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" about the deficit. "The fact is, he's taking us right over the cliff, right over the fiscal cliff," said Conrad of President Bush.
The line would stick. Conrad — then a ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, which he would go on to chair — would use the "fiscal cliff" term on the Senate Floor in September, arguing that Bush's economic policies were "taking this country right over the fiscal cliff."
And in February of 2004, Conrad warned then-director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, that "the overall budget is increasing, spending is increasing, and we've got record deficits now," said the Senator. "It doesn't add up. If we're honest, we know it doesn't add up. It doesn't come close to adding up, and he's got us heading to the fiscal cliff."
