Almost Nobody in Washington Cares About the Deficit
Evan Soltas says cutting the deficit is just cover for Republicans' and Democrats' other priorities.
This article is for subscribers only.
You'd never guess it, but very few people in Washington actually care about the federal government's budget deficit. Of course, the news media seem obsessed with the subject. The Washington Post has run 2,310 separate stories with the word "deficit" in them over the last year, according to the LexisNexis database of U.S. newspapers. That's one deficit story for every 10 the newspaper publishes in its front and opinion sections. But this doesn't mean anybody actually cares.
Deficit talk is a rhetorical ploy -- a decoy justification for the unpopular-but-necessary component of both parties' larger political agendas.