A Sea of Red Ink

As, I hope, most Amer­i­cans are, I am con­cerned about the fed­eral debt. Already high at the end of the Bush years, the fed­eral deficit is now even higher, and the fore­cast for future years is even worse.

Clearly this is unsustainable.

I voted for Obama and I sup­port his agenda. But at some point the deficit/​debt must be addressed. I believe Obama to be an intel­li­gent man and an astute politi­cian. He surely under­stands the poten­tial prob­lems of con­tin­u­ing to pile up debt. I have to believe that he has a plan.

And the plan is this.* Effec­tively deal­ing with the fed­eral deficit will not be polit­i­cally pop­u­lar. Pro­grams will have to be cut and taxes raised. It will take a lot of Obama’s polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to do this. So much so, that it would be dif­fi­cult for him to get his other agenda items through after deal­ing with the deficit.

Of course, get­ting his other agenda items through might not leave him with enough cap­i­tal to deal with the deficit. So what to do? By leav­ing the deficit for later, it con­tin­ues to grow to obscene amounts. A year (or two?) from now, con­gress will have no choice but to get seri­ous about the deficit. Democ­rats will have to accept some pro­gram cuts and Repub­li­cans will have to accept some taxes. They will be push­ing each other aside to cut and raise more than the other.

A guy can dream, right?

*No, I have no inside info. This is com­pletely spec­u­la­tive on my part.

Tagged as: Deficit, Obama