(CBS) — Christmas has come and gone, and I’ve checked my presents many, many times and still can’t find the one I want most: the big one, the pension reform I’ve been waiting for since last Christmas, since the last 10 Christmases, since forever we’ve all been waiting for pension reform to protect our public schools from going over the fiscal cliff.

The Chicago schools are a billion dollars in debt, 4,000 teachers are about to be fired; the number of kids in a classroom may go up, from 28 to 48, because the politicians in Springfield won’t do what we pay them to do $70,00 a year, and they’ve been in session not even half this year, been on vacation most of the year, all of July on summer vacation, all of September and October, on election vacation, and now they’re on Christmas and New Year’s vacation while our schools are going over the cliff.

To avoid the cliff, the politicians are now talking about raising taxes, again, which actually may be OK to remind us not to vote for them again.