Looking Into the Crystal Ball

The wondrous thing about American politics is how clear the crystal ball truly is. Any dimwit can take a peek and predict the future. I'll just take a random pick out of the grab bag known as "the Internet" and up I come with this...

It has been an interesting day for us fiscal policy wonks. Over my morning muffin, I digested President Obama’s plan to freeze some domestic spending for the next three years as well as his package of aid to the middle-class. Then, I spent a few hours chewing over the CBO’s latest budget projections. Finally, I watched the Senate trash the bipartisan budget commission.

Add it all up, and we are pretty much where we started, although some important issues are becoming clearer.

To take things slightly out of order, In today's budget update, CBO figures the 2010 deficit will be about $1.35 trillion, or 9.2 percent of GDP. We could cut the deficit in half by 2012 if Congress allows the Bush tax cuts to expire, lets the Alternative Minimum Tax bite 30 million middle-class Americans etc.—none of which is going to happen.

Who is this Howard Gleckman? And why would the Brookings Institute think that it can so easily see the future? How dare Gleckman and Brookings so easily dismiss the eminently rational action of allowing the tax cuts expire? Don't they know that the Congress is the great deliberative body of the American People? That the Congress is that institution mandated to deliberate on the fate of the nation and find the right path forward? How dare Gleckman and Brookings dismiss the noble institutions of democracy and their ability to carry out their sacred charge?

Oh well a second... it was the Congress under Bush that passed the idiot legislation to begin with. Yep, this is the same body that just gutted health care? This is the same 'noble body' who handed hundreds of billions to Wall Street while Wall Street thumbed its nose at the American people and proceeded to divvy up the billions in loot as "bonuses" among the gang of cutthroats otherwise known as "Wall Street bankers".

Maybe Gleckman and Brookings have a point after all...

Maybe you can predict the future when it comes to how the politicians will behave...

Gee... if the US Congress could behave like the UK or Canada, or even if the US Congress could pass a health care to get runaway heath care expenditures under control, then the future might look like this with lines going down or at least sideways instead of up, up , up:

from CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research)