I respectfully disagree about the present, and agree with your long term scenario of a devaluing currency via printing / fiat as they spend like Linsey Lohan on a bender.
I spent a great deal time to prepare and a commensurate sum to sit with a CPA and see what the effects of the sun-setting of the Bush tax rates and the lack of AMT patches for 12' and 13' would cost my family. Worst case scenario? almost 8 grand for 12' & 13' with the AMT kicking in. The AMT is the biggest bugaboo in this whole mix and hardly anyone is talking about it. Immediate, perhaps if HR's / Payrolls around the country at employers automatically default to the Clinton rates. Yes, they can do a stop gap measure, and yes implementing the tax code back to the Clinton rates would be a nightmare, they don't even have the old code and need to bring some old programmers out of retirement to make it happen. A tangent issue is the CPA and EA I talk to are freaking because of what it will do to their careers / practices between 1/1/13 and 4 /15/13. They cannot give advice or operate with no code via legislation by Congress and said code codified by the IRS so they can actually have something to work with.
As to bringing out old programmers, that is not necessary. As one who had a 40 year career programming business applications I can say there would be very little needed to change the existing programs. Most of the tax computations for a business is based upon a matrix of constants. Changing those tables would be very simple. The problem would be what to change them to. If Slumgress holds off with the fix(?) then the IRS has to adjust their directives to account for the delay in implementing the new rates and so business has to wait until they get the proper numbers to put into the programs. It is a catch-22 situation and I can easily predict it will be wrong which leads to more problems next year or at least at the end of 2013 to fix it. Typical government practise.