Push that Boulder Up the Hill, New York Times

The New York Times has recommitted itself to providing the context for the debt-ceiling crisis with a helpful infographic and article. How did the deficit get so big?

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

It's a factual statement. It's been repeated ad nauseum. It has no effect on the American right's philosophic depedence on cutting unrelated government priorities.

Budget and Economic Messaging 101

The key for Democrats fighting the radical Paul Ryan budget is to be clear about what the budget means. The budget on its own terms are immensely unpopular. Of course, the key is message discipline and focus. I think Ezra Klein hones in on the simple problem for Republicans in the first line:

a) Non-defense discretionary: Brings spending back to pre-2008 levels and freezes it there for five years.

Americans don't want to go back to pre-2008 government. Of course, that phrase is a little obscure, and hard to connect with Americans' concrete realities.
Americans don't want to go back to Bush era government. Independent fiscal hawks are still unhappy with the Bush-era spending as they were with the current administration's attempts to fix the holes. Even self-identifying conservatives still don't like the Bush brand. Yet, it's exactly the plan that Republicans have promised.

Americans still remember that the Bush administrations' policies ended in the financial catastrophe which started the recession on mainstreet. Americans understand that Bush-era spending levels did not reflect their values. Americans soundly rejected Bush-era politics and spending in the 2008 election.