Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
The Congressional Budget Office offered a sobering assessment of the economic implications of plunging off the fiscal cliff Thursday, just as lawmakers prepare for a fight over taxes and spending. 
  
 If Congress and the Obama administration allow scheduled tax increases and spending cuts to occur, the economy will shrink by 0.5 percent in 2013. The unemployment rate would soar to 9.1 percent — up from 7.9 percent today. 
  
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 Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) asked for the report and said the findings are another reminder of the need to find an alternative to the tax increases and spending cuts that make up the fiscal cliff. 
  
 “The consequences of inaction will deliver a dramatic, short-term blow to the economy,” Baucus said in a statement. “We need to build a bridge over this fiscal cliff. We need to work together — Republicans and Democrats — on a solution that provides some certainty to American families and businesses, while also bringing down our deficit and debt.” 
  
 The report largely echoes earlier CBO projections about the fiscal cliff’s impact. 
  
 An aide for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said the report “confirms that raising taxes on all taxpayers will result in fewer help wanted signs hanging in the windows of businesses across the country.” 
  
 “Job creators agree and have made it clear that raising taxes will result in a weaker economy and fewer jobs for the millions of Americans struggling to find work,” the aide said. “They are depending on the administration to provide the certainty they need to invest, hire and plan for the future. Achieving that certainty begins with stopping all tax hikes and focusing on pro-growth tax reform. The House stands ready to work with the White House and Senate to achieve those goals.” 
  
 The CBO said the outlook would be much more positive if Congress extended some or all of the expiring tax cuts and blocked the $109 billion in spending cuts slated next year for discretionary and mandatory programs. 
  
 If Congress blocked the spending cuts and extended all of the expiring tax cuts — except for the payroll tax break — the economy would grow by 2.25 percent next year. Adding the payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits would nudge the growth closer to 3 percent. 
  
 The report also demonstrates that extending all of the soon-to-end tax cuts would provide the biggest boost to the economy. 
  
 Continuing the breaks for all taxpayers would boost GDP by 1.5 percent. An extension just for families making less than $250,000 and individuals earning less than $200,000 — the level that Democrats are seeking — would expand the economy by 1.25 percent. 
  
 Kelsey Snell contributed to this report. 
  
 This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:20 p.m. on November 8, 2012. ||||| The Congressional Budget Office warns in a report Thursday that allowing tax hikes and spending cuts to occur – going over the fiscal cliff – could cause a recession. 
  
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 America’s budgetary scorekeepers have published a postelection “FYI” for the president and Congress, with this blunt message: That “fiscal cliff” thing is dangerous, but so is the opposite policy of ignoring the national debt. 
  
 “Fiscal cliff” is the nickname for a collection of tax increases and federal spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect at the start of next year. 
  
 Economists at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned in a report Thursday that allowing those tax hikes and spending cuts to occur “will probably cause the economy to fall back into a recession next year.” 
  
 But, the CBO report added in the next breath, letting the policy changes take effect would actually “make the economy stronger later in the decade and beyond.” The reason: The tax hikes and spending cuts would reduce federal deficits, thus avoiding a dangerous surge in federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). 
  
 What this implies is that there’s a very tricky job ahead for a Democratic president, a Republican-led House, and a Democratic-majority Senate. 
  
 The ideal way forward, suggested in the CBO report and in other independent reviews, would be to change the cliff into a gradual slope – one that avoids recession in the near-term but still leads down a path of deficit reduction. It’s not just a matter of saying, “Let’s postpone those tax and spending changes.” 
  
 Elected officials in both parties have endorsed the general idea of long-term fiscal reform. But the choices are difficult. The new report, titled “Choices for Deficit Reduction,” makes a big deal of that. 
  
 It talks about various options for reducing entitlement benefits, cutting other federal spending, or raising new tax revenue. A mix of those approaches may very well be needed, the CBO implies, because of the magnitude of the mismatch between expected revenues and spending. 
  
 The report is both a nudge to action and a partial tool kit for lawmakers as they bargain in the coming days and weeks. 
  
 Some overview points from the report and other recent CBO analysis: 
  
 • The option of doing nothing isn’t pretty. If policymakers push the economy straight over the cliff on Jan. 1, a recession would probably result, yielding a decline of 0.5 percent in GDP for the calendar year. The unemployment rate would shoot up to 9.1 percent, the CBO predicts. 
  
 • The option of fully removing the cliff would result in an economy that grows, but not at a roaring pace. A separate analysis released Thursday by the CBO estimated that keeping Bush-era tax rates in place, nixing the cuts in defense and other spending, and making other changes (including extending payroll-tax relief for workers) would push GDP up to a growth rate of about 2.4 percent. 
  
 • But fully removing the cliff adds a lot to the federal deficit. Spending would exceed revenue by an extra $503 billion in 2013. That’s equal to more than 3 percent of a year’s GDP. 
  
 • Doing nothing to stem the red ink would have long-term consequences. The CBO outlines negative effects including an impaired ability to respond to unexpected challenges, as well as “an increase in the likelihood of a fiscal crisis, in which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would thus lose the ability to borrow at affordable interest rates.” |||||
A:
It's not so much a surprising conclusion as a reminder of what's at stake: The Congressional Budget Office warned today that a failure to head off the fiscal cliff at year's end will probably lead to a new recession next year along with a jump in the unemployment rate to 9.1%, reports Politico. The nonpartisan panel said the abrupt combination of tax hikes and spending cuts also would slow economic growth by .5% over the year, reports the Wall Street Journal. The report comes as House Republicans and the White House were suggesting they were ready to talk about a deal. And now comes the tricky part, as the Christian Science Monitor explains: While the CBO warned that doing nothing and plunging over the cliff is bad in the short term, it said those tax increases and spending cuts would help in the long run by reducing the deficit and the national debt. "The ideal way forward, suggested in the CBO report and in other independent reviews, would be to change the cliff into a gradual slope," writes the Monitor's Mark Trumbull, "one that avoids recession in the near-term but still leads down a path of deficit reduction."