The first three months of 2013 brought us a new Congress that was settling in . . . a second term of a President with a renewed agenda . . . and plenty of battles over the economic course of our nation between the House, Senate and the White House. 

    How well do you remember 1985? Twenty eight years ago, the average price for a gallon of gasoline was $1.20, a movie ticket was $2.75, a stamp cost 22 cents, and a car cost $9,000.  Microsoft introduced Windows 1.0 that year, President Reagan first met Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Union), the first mobile phone call in England was made, Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first teacher to fly on the space shuttle Challenger, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps was born, and the hit movie was “Back to the Future.”  

    As the nation was hanging on by its fingernails to avoid a plunge off the fiscal cliff on New Year’s Day, a nine-month farm bill extension was thrown into the package to avert a huge jump in milk prices and other unmanageable elements of the 1949 Farm Act.  The purpose was to kick the can down the road a little further until bigger spending cuts across all government programs were clarified in the first quarter of the year.