Deficit Day Of Reckoning?

David Broder
Washington Post

(Excerpts:)

This year, as I learned from conversations with two senior White House officials last week, the president hopes his budget will become a starting point for serious negotiation -- not a partisan football or simple laughingstock.

That hope was encouraged by a letter to the president last week from the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry M. Reid, and the chairmen of the two budget committees, Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. and Sen. Kent Conrad.

....

...it put forward four principles that could lead to a successful budget outcome this year.

- "The budget should account realistically for projected federal costs," including the billions needed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the adjustments needed in the alternative minimum tax, which otherwise would punish millions of middle-class families.

- "The budget should realistically project short- and long-term deficits," as objectively as the calculations of the Congressional Budget Office, which show the prospect of very large deficits if current tax and spending policies are unchanged.

- "The budget should provide detail throughout the entire budget period," making clear the hard choices that lie ahead.

- "The budget should be based on fiscal discipline that is sustained over the long term," underlining the fact that it will take years of effort to repair the damage done to our fiscal condition in the past six years.

(The entire piece is here.)