By Jeffrey D. Sachs
The New York Review of Books - February 6, 2014
The December budget deal, worked out between Representative Paul Ryan
and Senator Patty Murray, has been widely greeted with relief. Since
the first days of the Obama Administration in 2009, Washington has been
in a pitched battle over the budget, with endless fights over stimulus
packages, temporary tax cuts, spending limits and sequestration, fiscal
cliffs, debt ceilings, and government shutdowns. Who would not welcome a
moment of bipartisan calm, especially when the economy still needs to
break out of its prolonged torpor?
Yet the budget battles have
never been quite what they’ve seemed, and the new bipartisan agreement
is not a victory of bipartisan reason. Despite all of the budget turmoil
over the past five years, the long-term trajectory of the US budget has
remained remarkably and dangerously unaltered. With this new agreement,
the US takes another step toward a diminished future.
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