This is why people need to stop celebrating our rapidly falling deficits. Our deficits aren’t dropping because we’re doing something right. They’re dropping because we’re doing everything wrong. We’re cutting deficits much too quickly in the next few years — that’s what Bernanke’s testimony is about. We’re letting them rise (albeit modestly) between 2016 and 2023. We’re doing basically nothing about long-term deficits, which is where the problem actually lies. And we’re using policies, like sequestration, that most everyone agrees are bad policy — so we’re cutting spending by cutting the wrong kind of spending.
No wonder Bernanke’s irked.
More on Helicopter Ben
So we’re cutting the “wrong kind” of spending. Care to guess what the right kind of spending is?
The right kind of spending cuts, according to Ezra: “…entitlement reforms that will grow in the second or third decades, or through tax reforms.”
Guess that personal visit with Obama at the White House earlier this week reminded Klein to keep toeing the catfood line.