Inventing Budget Crises: Standard Practice at the Washington Post

Ezra Klein has a good piece in the Post's Sunday Outlook section on the need to change the filibuster rules in the Senate. However, he ends the piece with a bizarre reference to: "a coming budget crisis." This should have brought out the editor's red pen and some quick scratch marks. What budget crisis? The country has an economic crisis,that manifests itself in the form of double-digit unemployment and mass foreclosures. This crisis didn't make the end of article list of concerns. The economic crisis is causing large budget deficits, but on what universe is the budget a crisis? There is certainly no serious economic problem caused by the these deficits nor any immediate problem for the country's finances, as demonstrated by the low cost of borrowing in financial markets. Obviously, there are long-term budget problems, but these stem from the cost of supporting a broken health care system. And in any case, it is a bit hard to term budget strains that are well more than a decade in the future a "crisis." So, the "coming budget crisis" is like "the coming attack of Martians," not a line that belongs in a serious newspaper.

--Dean Baker