The Issue of the Decade

Mary Landrieu said a few days back that dealing with the deficit is the "issue of the decade." And this is from a Democrat.

The inside-the-Beltway mentality creates its own Bizarro World, brain-dead obsessions that are so distorted compared to the real world, that it completely takes one's breath away. The fact that both parties are focused on the same obsessions is a tribute to the power of the framing machine the Wall Street-backed conservative media has created.

I write this even though I do actually think getting a handle on the long-term structural deficit is very important both economically and politically. Being the Midwestern Methodist I am, the kind of debt we are running up makes me very unsettled, and paying hundreds of billions of dollars in interest does the economy no good. I also think that, politically, Democrats and progressives always will have trouble making the case for doing the kinds of things we want government to do unless we make progress on bringing the federal deficit under control. I think progressives should do what Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and organizations like Demos (a client), the Campaign for America's Future and others have done, and put out their own plans for reducing the deficit. But having said all that, to mindlessly parrot Republican, panic-inducing talking points about the deficit being the issue of the decade is as wrong as can be.