License To Steal

I'll write more once I process a bit, but one thing which Obama said which is a fairly common mantra is that we need to boost spending in the short term while credibly committing to cutting it medium and long term. This is a nice fantasy of a world of responsible politicians where the priorities of today remain the priorities of tomorrow. But for the most part today's Congress cannot tie the hand of tomorrow's Congress (or, hell, next week's vote). I remember when there was a credible plan to cut the deficit long term. It worked! It worked so well fiscal hawk Alan Greenspan decided deficit was better than surplus. And we had a massive tax cut. And then another massive tax cut. And then two lovely endless wars. The only people who actually care about deficits are Democrats, and then they reduce them and then the Republicans laugh because they have more room to do tax cuts for rich people and to lavish money on their favorite industries.