{"id":546390,"date":"2010-04-28T14:20:56","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T18:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/04\/are-we-smart-enough-to-think-about-the-deficit\/39638\/"},"modified":"2010-04-28T14:20:56","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T18:20:56","slug":"are-we-smart-enough-to-think-about-the-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/546390","title":{"rendered":"Are We Smart Enough to Think About the Deficit?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit in Washington DC today, most panelists tried to distingiush between necessary short-term deficits and harmful structural long-term deficits. &#8220;I think Americans are smart enough to think about two things at the same time,&#8221; former CBO director Alice Rivlin said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Maybe so. But the President himself isn&#8217;t always good at distinguishing between short-term and long-term deficits. Instead he&#8217;s said things <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/02\/how-obama-is-failing-to-defend-his-budget\/35185\/\">like<\/a> &#8220;Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions, the federal government should do the same.&#8221; That doesn&#8217;t make sense. The federal government spends more when American families spend less. That&#8217;s why recessions create deficits. <\/p>\n<p>Later in the event, OMB director Peter Orszag got the short- long-term thing right, but Peter Orszag isn&#8217;t the federal government&#8217;s top spokesperson on economic policy. That&#8217;s the president. And a key part of explaining the motivation behind the deficit commission is explaining that Americans need to look at deficits with bifocals. In the short-term, they&#8217;re good. In the long-term, they&#8217;re not good. It&#8217;s not so hard to say that, but comparing federal shortfalls with families in debt is so ingrained in the way presidents talk about the deficit that we can&#8217;t get away from it, even when the president is implicitly asking us to live with red ink for a while.<\/p><\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>(Nav Image Credit: mansionwb\/flickr)<\/div>\n<p><br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:3354c89225cfcf2a2bfe1cd720510e97:JfHAc%2BAzURf2KjWIC6Et6K7c%2FLMyUIT916dAEaW62shncI1AoejuMHlx7Li7qkZgGRB6M0LLV9L%2F'><img border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/emailthis.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:4a1cc8bffed778cb5aca88fceeaaa8dc:WLznOxbglcb2e4dATMhLvp418arPjbCsHaAI4jcHvWW7F8WujLfc4QZcRfEuf%2Fomr80%2FK6LJVdba'><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/digg.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:c3ba611ccd7babdb090044f1385486bb:pIN8850qBiVuuJb1ZVfZ98o6xIjiokwkdZKPTnpDGc%2BfB1PfuxvdpI9tN0THIdCEOt6Kqh%2FQmQTu'><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/reddit.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:832e632a81626dac5db1c669990f267a:hmSto1rwW%2BsfLYYMqK33bfxHLY0gE7xNW%2FmTg9bxm3kHrRHkzJeDA8HIhHzYYyFbPOibUz6U2dOZ4w%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Twitter' alt='Add to Twitter' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/twitter.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:09a1f6c907ae21b34ec5a707aa9e75e4:c1mTM32mo4OTNdJgoyWB2Btm0EeSJz4b3FH%2FAsicdcJOqAvyMTk%2F9fEf8Nw9NKp1GAoWuqEnfW3d'><img border='0' title='Add to del.icio.us' alt='Add to del.icio.us' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/delicious.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:948de42e05625f394d6126befe0ab07f:UrQ48eF%2FksPUqU0Gij%2FuXtfz2v4ZPncCCKmnoeqUYj%2Fd0m9%2BKu%2F3vdhYmF70iryFCuKBuq6I1r0qaA%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/stumbleit.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:e6932b1bd703681ab49973ee96a81408:NU0CqtKk%2FfT%2BB7wIeBFXcgVh8SDnu7RsZA0eJykonTQw%2Bw6CQYdHQlLBu7WXBxVylsaimInjXmgPnQ%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/facebook.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=43a93c05b4c1f6875acc989675467868&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=43a93c05b4c1f6875acc989675467868&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/ib.adnxs.com\/seg?add=24595&#038;t=2\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/AtlanticBusinessChannel\/~4\/Pxbf7gdkrwQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit in Washington DC today, most panelists tried to distingiush between necessary short-term deficits and harmful structural long-term deficits. &#8220;I think Americans are smart enough to think about two things at the same time,&#8221; former CBO director Alice Rivlin said.&nbsp; Maybe so. But the President himself isn&#8217;t always good at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}