No Way Out?
“How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?” Larry Summers Indeed. The problem, of course, is that it seems that our government can’t balance the budget without the benefit of world peace and a dot.com bubble. The Times almost notices this when it writes, “Mr. Obama has published the 10-year numbers in part, it seems, to make the point that the political gridlock of the past few years, in which most Republicans refuse to talk about tax increases and Democrats refuse to talk about cutting entitlement programs, is unsustainable.” I say almost notices this because my current research project indicates that this gridlock is hardly new. The exact same “gridlock” blocked deficit correction in the wake of the Vietnam escalation, in the wake of the Reagan military buildup, and in the wake of the 9/11 military buildup. In each case, everyone wants to reduce the deficit, they just disagree about how. Wilbur Mills blocked Johnson’s proposed tax increase for a year in order to force Johnson to accept cuts in Great Society programs. And how soon we forget the congressional war of attrition that brought us Gramm-Rudman-Hollings
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No Way Out?
