There are only two things less surprising than the fact that American taxpayers have been pushed to the edge of yet another fiscal cliff.

The first is what Congress and the president are doing to keep us from going over it, which is, apparently, nothing.

The second is that the leaders of both parties, both in Congress and the White House, are spending their time reminding us that it’s the other guys’ fault for not getting a deal done rather than actually working to get one done.

But while Congress and the president engage in yet another round of grade school tattletaling, we should all be reminded that the mind-numbing absurdity of this situation, which we all now commonly know as sequestration, was self-inflicted.

Congress, in a scene straight out of “Mission: Impossible,” intentionally rigged the economy to self-destruct at a predetermined, arbitrary hour if they otherwise could not come up with a series of spending cuts or tax increases to help cut our national deficit.

The theory behind sequestration was that Congress would pass a law containing such severe and drastic spending cuts that no one would ever allow them to take place, forcing themselves to get our financial house in order before a self-imposed deadline.

It should tell us all we need to know about of this country’s elected leadership that it felt the need to create such a self-regulatory device in the first place.

The fact that it didn’t work says even more.