Ezra Klein on Deficit Reduction

Ezra Klein offers insight into the difficulty of solving long-term problems such as the budget deficit on his Washington Post blog.

To say another word on the question of deficits, one of the important characteristics of the spending issue is that it's not conceptually difficult to solve in the way that, say, developing new energy technologies is. It's just politically difficult to solve. But most experts have a general sense of what should be done: short-term increases in deficits during a recession paired with long-term reforms to bring the government's spending projections down to more sustainable levels.

Our deficit problem, most would agree, is a long-term deficit problem. The only way to address it is to pass laws that change our spending over time. Which is what the Affordable Care Act did. It's what a responsible conservative administration would do if they were in power. But the other side will always attempt to undermine the perception that progress is being made on our fiscal problems.

--Ballard Burgher